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Kant’s Meaning by “Nature” | Kant uses the term “nature” extensively in the CPR and Prolegomena. Since we are to avoid all considerations about knowledge of noumena as a result of Hume’s arguments, then how exactly do we understand Kant’s concept of nature with no ties to things in themselves?
I feel like this should be easier to grasp... Though it’s like trying to remember the word for something I never knew in the first place. | For Kant the application of the law of causality to phenomena constitutes nature. Nature, consequently, is the world of determinateness and necessity as opposed to morality, which is the sphere of freedom. | 18 | 64 |
ELI5: How do commercial fishers know what they are going to catch? | They will seek out huge loads of one species and throw out the rest... but how do they hunt and track specific species? | Location, depth, bait, tools.
Certain fish are only in certain locations, so to fish a specific fish you must be in a specific location, this isn't necessarily the difference of Alaska vs Florida, but can be location where a certain environment or phenomenon is observed IE: where currents come together, or where certain food can be found said fish like.
Certain fish swim at certain depths, you fish as deep where the fish will be.
Certain fish are attracted by certain kinds of bait.
To catch specific fish you might use different methods or tools, something that is most effective for that kind of fish, it's not always just massive nets. | 37 | 27 |
ELI5: Why do Hindu dieties have more than 2 arms/multiple faces usually? | Hindu {and some associated with some schools of Buddhism) have multiple arms as a symbol of their capacity for actions (how much more could you do if you had more hands and arms?) and multiple faces/heads to show their all seeing natures. | 13 | 18 |
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ELI5: Why do people nod their head when they hear music they like? | When people like music you see them nod along with it, are they any particular reason why this occurs? | Charles Darwin researched nodding for his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals and found that head nods were fairly (not completely though) universal for agreement. So if something is agreeable it seems we are built to nod. Nice music, nod. | 120 | 244 |
CMV: Optical insurance should be part of regular health insurance plans | In the US, vision insurance is usually sold separately from health insurance plans for the rest of your body. The reason for this, I understand, is historical. Eye doctors/optometrists aren't educated at the same facilities as ophthalmologists and the professions were historically considered separate. However, I don't think it makes sense that traditional health insurance plans in the USA don't cover vision care. Arguments I have heard for why this makes sense:
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* Most people don't use vision insurance, so adding it in would drive up premiums unnecessarily. I don't think this makes sense at all. Most people won't require \*most\* services that their health insurance plans cover. I have never needed a cardiologist, a radiologist, or a dermatologist, but if I did, my health insurance plan would cover it.
* Vision insurance isn't medically necessary; you won't die just because you can't see well. I think this argument is made primarily by people who don't have poor vision. I do have poor vision, and my glasses/contact lenses allow me to live a normal life. It's just as medically necessary for my health and happiness as a hearing aid or prosthetic. I could not function independently without my glasses.
* Vision care is relatively cheap, so most people can afford it on their own, so it isn't an injustice that it isn't covered. Perhaps, but it's still a huge hassle to have to shell out a couple hundred dollars every year for something I need to function.
* The only argument I've ever heard that even remotely makes sense to me is that eye care is usually a very predictable, fixed cost every year, so it wouldn't make economic sense to cover it. For example, insurance companies know that it will cost them about $100 per person with vision deficiencies per year, so they will try to get each of those people to pay in about $100 each for the benefits, which then defeats the purpose of the insurance policy for the customer, as they will be just as well off paying for the services directly themselves. The thing I don't understand is why this argument is applied to vision insurance and nothing else. For example, I could see it being quite predictable that women of child-bearing age will each cost an insurance company $500 every three years for pap smears--thus insurance companies would try to raise prices to recoup those costs--and then the insurance plan would no longer really be a viable option for the customer. But it only seems to happen for optometry and other services considered medically unnecessary.
I actually am generally extremely pleased with my health insurance, but this one baffles me. Other than for historical reasons, why can't I get vision care through my insurance? Why can I get so many services for free but when I need glasses, I'm left scouring weird websites hunting for deals? Why does this system make sense at all? Someone please CMV. | Ok, first... you need to understand why routine care is covered by medical insurance rather than being "pay as you go":
People who skimp on preventative care because of the cost are very expensive to the insurer in the long run because lack of preventative care means you have a higher chance of an expensive disease or missing cancer until it's too late (and much more expensive to treat). Furthermore, there are public health benefits to things like vaccinations and infectious disease review.
Vision, on the other hand... really doesn't have any of these problems. There's almost nothing you can do to "prevent" vision problems, so there's no reason for the health insurance company (or the people paying for it, like your work) to want to cover "routine care". And you basically automatically know when your own vision is getting blurry... you don't need a doctor to tell you that.
The only exception might be glaucoma screening... but you can have that done by an opthamologist's office on your medical insurance already.
Now we come to the economic reasons: Others have mentioned the predictability of vision costs... actually, it's the exact opposite: you spend as much on glasses and contacts *as you want to*. It's almost entirely under the control of the patient.
For this reason, as you've pointed out, vision care always has a low-end "allowance" for the cheapest possible glasses. And the premiums for that are actually higher than the predicted payout, to allow for insurance company profit... so actually there's very little incentive for an *individual* to want to pay for vision insurance... it's a sucker's game... it's basically prepaid service, not insurance.
Except for one thing: in the US, healthcare is generally paid for by employers, who will offer this "insurance" separately as a benefit to attract employees (and employees having good vision is in their interest too... and many companies actually care about their employees)...
But... naturally... a company doesn't want to pay for vision coverage for every worker... only those who actually need it and are willing to cough up a small coinsurance payment to discourage *everyone* from just taking it.
Hence... market forces have demanded that it be separate coverage in the US and other places with common workplace-based insurance. | 27 | 389 |
ELI5:Why are diseases that have been eliminated kept in labs.What if the labs get contaminated and the disease spreads again? | they are kept in case some country or terrorist group has an unregistered secret culture (a viable or dormant preserved form of the disease) that they may use for biological warfare. If, say, smallpox was released to the public in a terrorist act, everyone born after the 1970s when they stopped vaccinating would be susceptible to the disease. The idea behind keeping cultures of these diseases is to allow the quick and workable design of a new vaccine for a hyper-mutated weaponised strain in the event of attack, to eliminate loss of life. However the debate behind keeping these cultures is rife and the potential risks may outweigh the benefit. Basically, they should probably just cook the cultures and be done with it but we can't be sure that someone isn't harbouring the disease in some secret place. | 73 | 97 |
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To what extent does the conversion from metal wires to fiber optics mitigate the economic risk from solar storms? | My question occurs while reading [this article](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/) about the worst solar storm ever recorded, in which telegraph lines generated electrical fires. It seems that perhaps the greatest terrestrial risk from solar storms are very long metal circuits, such as might exist in power or communications lines. However, power cables are, by definition, ready to withstand electrical surges to some extent (although the article discusses the risk to transformers). Does the transition from copper wires to fiber for the world's communication grid help mitigate the extent of disruption a large solar storm would cause? | The long haul optical fibers have conductors in them to power the optical amplifiers needed to boost the signal periodically. If the power surge that is induced in the line damages the amplifier systems, game over. Short runs can be just the optical components as the losses are low, and those would be stable in an EM storm but the electronics on the ends would still be sensitive. | 14 | 29 |
Functional programming | Can you give me some examples in which problems or areas functional programming solve better than OOP or/and Procedural Programming? | I just want to add that learning functional programming isn’t only useful for doing functional programming. You can take concepts from it and apply them in other language paradigms as well.
You can make side-effect-free or “pure” functions in C, do recursion in Java, and use lambdas and closures in Python, for example.
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ELI5: What would happen if we could zoom in with a microscope infinitely? Would we keep seeing more detail or is there a 'cut off' where we can't see any more detail? | Let's say you want to look at a Hydrogen atom in the DNA of an animal with your theoretical microscope. At normal zooms, everything looks normal, and as you zoom in on the cell you see more detail of smaller things. You keep zooming and eventually you see the chromosones all coiled up. It's probably around this point that things start to look fuzzy.
As other people have mentioned, seeing smaller things means using smaller wavelengths, and using smaller wavelengths means using more energy. To see smaller and smaller things, you need to put more and more energy into a smaller and smaller space. That doesn't bode well for the strands of DNA you're about to look at! As you keep zooming, you keep throwing photons (or electrons) at the DNA to be able to see it, and as you get closer in, the energy you're adding is enough to break the bonds, breaking the DNA molecule up.
No bother, you're really interesting in that Hydrogen atom! As you get closer, you start to see bumps where the different atoms are, and they may even be moving around each other. These bumps are the electron clouds of the atoms. The electrons exist in the space around the nucleus of the atom, and the amount of space depends on two things: the force between them, and the mass of the electron. If the force between them is large, the space the electrons exist in is smaller. If the electrons had a larger mass, the space the electrons exists in would be smaller. (There are experiments with atoms that contain muons, which are heavier than electrons, and those atoms have smaller muon clouds than electron clouds.)
After a while you get bored of seeing these bumps and clouds, because that's not what you expect. You want to see where the electron is, and what it's made of. You crank up the zoom again and pump some more energy in. That cloud shrinks in size and then disappears from view. The electron hasn't exploded, you've given it enough energy to escape the atom and it's gone. It's a bit like trying to squeeze an oily rubber ball. Squeeze it hard enough and it shoots off in some random direction and is gone forever. Even if you could zoom in on the electron, you'd see no substructure to it. But let's pursue the electron a bit more. Let's say you catch it in an electromagnetic field and can zoom in as much as you want. What would you see? As you zoom in more and more, you pump in more energy. You start to see electrons, positrons, and photons coming out of the region of space where the electron is. What's happening is that the energy you're adding is creating more particles. But still, the electron itself is just a very tiny cloud, so tiny that it looks like a particle. Don't be fooled though, the electron cloud is only small because the forces acting on it (the electromagnetic field) are stronger than the forces acting on it when it was in the atom. The more you zoom in, the more particles you create, and the more variety, but ultimately, you see nothing new in terms of substructure of the electron. How disappointing.
You're not done though. You notice that the Hydrogen atom is still there, and another electron has wandered in to fill the gap left by the previous electron. You zoom in on the Hydrogen atom, this time looking at the proton. The proton cloud is smaller than the electron cloud because the forces holding it together are much stronger. In fact, they are called the "strong force". The proton, like the electron, exists in a small cloud. You crank up the zoom and notice that the proton is wobbling and pulsating slightly. As you zoom in more, this becomes more pronounced. It turns out that the proton does have some substructure! As you crank up the zoom, you notice you can see the cloud actually looks like three sub clouds, all overlapping each other.
You notice that your microscope has a "chargeometer" for measuring electric charge. This is because at these zooms, you are literally firing photons (light particles) at the target and seeing where they bounce off. These light particles interact with electric charge, so the more charge the microscope looks at, the more light particles get reflected back. You point your microscope at the electron cloud to calibrate it and it comes back with a charge reading of -3. Now you point it at the proton again, zoomed out a bit, and it comes back with a charge reading of +3. Interesting... the electron and proton have equal and opposite charge readings. That must be something to do with how atoms form and they are electrically neutral. You zoom in again and try to focus on the sub clouds in the proton. They keep moving about, but you can just about point the chargeometer at them, and you get readings of +2, +2, and -1. It seems that the proton has three smaller particles inside, each with their own cloud, and with different charges. These are in fact the quarks that make up the proton, and you can see them dancing around.
You press on and zoom in even more. As you do so, the dancing of the clouds slows down, and you start to see faint traces of other clouds between them. (The slowing down is because of special relativity and quantum mechanics. Everyone sees the same things happening, but from different perspectives. From the point of view of someone in the "centre of mass" frame of references, the proton and photon move towards each other with equal and opposite momentum. As you crank up the zoom, the photon carries more energy, so in this "centre of mass" frame, the proton has to move faster to match it. The faster the proton moves, the slower time passes for it. You see the outcome of this, not as time slowing down, but as interactions between the photon and proton becoming less frequent.) Essentially, as you crank up the zoom further, you start to "freeze out" the quarks, and their clouds become more distinct.
Around this level of zoom, you also start to notice the other particles around the quarks, known as "gluons". Gluons hold the nucleus together, and they are, as the name suggests "sticky". They don't have electric charge, so you can't see them directly. Instead you see other particles bouncing off them, first the quarks, and then new particles you are creating. This is just like with the electron cloud. You pump in more energy, and you get more particles. You crank up the zoom to see what happens. The proton starts to wobble and the quarks shift apart, It looks like you're about to split the proton apart! But no, a new particle, this time a "pion" shoots out the side, and the proton goes back to how it was before. No matter how much try to zoom in, and give the proton more energy, you will never split it up. You will never separate out a quark or a gluon. Instead you will just create more and more particles. In fact this is how the LHC works. The LHC smashes protons into each other at super high speeds. The quarks and gluons get "frozen out", and as they fly past each other, a tiny fraction interact and make new particles. Of those new particles, an even tinier fraction are the Higgs boson.
You decide to keep zooming. You create more and more particles, until eventually you have a sea of quarks, antiquarks and gluons. This is known as a quark gluon plasma, and it acts like a strange fluid. It's hard to see "inside" it, because the quarks and gluons absorb nearly all the light they produce. You press on further, and see a handful of new particles (W and Z bosons, Higgs bosons, occasionally a neutron or even a Helium nucleus).
Edit: Wow, thanks for all the awards and lovely comments! :D
Edit 2: Clarified the size of the electron cloud and proton cloud vs the size of the electron and proton. | 4,835 | 3,144 |
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CMV it is Immoral to Prevent Alfie Evans from Seeking Treatment Outside the UK |
There is a big controversy going on in the UK about a child named Alfie Evans. He has existed in a semi-vegitative state for 18 months with no signs of improvement. He has been on a ventilator and a feeding tube to care for these needs. Recently the NHS decided to terminate care for him against the wishes of his parents. The parents have advocated for Alfie to leave the UK and seek treatment in foreign countries. A court in the UK has barred Alfie from leaving the country. The ban on travel seems unnecessary and immoral.
Here's an article about the case: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/index.html | As part of the way the NHS functions, authority for acceptable and ethical treatment is given to a patient's medical staff. This is necessary to prevent parents or other medical lay-people from refusing necessary treatment, implementing alternative remedies rather than doctor prescribed ones, or any other ways in which a legal guardian could negatively impact treatment. For instance, if a child was in the hospital with a life-threatening infection, the NHS could prevent the parents from visiting him and giving him an unknown family remedy because that would be materially likely to harm the patient.
And as sad as it is, part of acceptable and ethical medical treatment is preventing patients from experiencing undue suffering or hardship in end-of-life situations, which can include refusing transfers and/or a controlled removal of life support for patients who are essentially guaranteed to die. It is not ethical for a doctor to recommend aggressive action they believe has an insignificant chance of working just because its something different and miracles can happen; the most likely result of such recommendations would just be for those patients to suffer before dying.
Based on the article you have linked, the parents wish to transfer Alfie to a hospital in Italy, but even there they expect to simply perform palliative care; in this situation, that would essentially be putting Alfie on life support and hoping for the best. Even with Alfie's success at breathing on his own, neither the hospital in the UK or in Italy believes there is any chance Alfie will recover and can only plan to keep Alfie alive as long as possible. Given this situation, the medically ethical decision is not to keep Alfie alive but vegetative forever, nor would it be ethical for doctors to recommend a risky transfer to another country just so *they* could keep Alfie alive but vegetative. | 30 | 31 |
ELI5: If someone is on death row and has a medical issue causing them the die sooner than their execution date, why would they be given medical help? | Morally I kind of understand, but financially and logically it does not make sense to me. | Up until the moment the executioner turns the key, the state must provide care for their convicted felons. The logic behind this is that up until that last moment, the execution is not 100% certain. There are years of appeals, and the governor might still pardon the convicted at the last moment. Also, allowing someone to die from a disease without treatment can be considered as cruel and unusual punishment. | 33 | 18 |
ELI5: What is physically happening when your ear suddenly starts ringing? | The first thing to understand is how we perceive sound: We have outer and inner ear hair cells, and they both detect vibrations and pressure changes of the basilar membrane. The reason we have two types of hair cells is because, while vibrations travel very efficiently in the fluid of the inner ear, they require a lot of energy (think about trying to run on land vs. trying to run in a pool).
Outer ear cells, then, are designed as amplifiers. When they detect low energy vibrations, they vibrate in time with them, amplifying the signal and sending it to the inner ear. Most of the time, this system works perfectly, but - like any biological system - it can get buggy. Sometimes the outer ear cells will freak out and vibrate on their own, and that's when you get the sudden onset tinnitus. There's also a control system that will tell the outer ear hair cells to knock it off, but it takes about 30-45 seconds to kick in. | 319 | 737 |
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ELI5 why are there so many B vitamins? | B vitamins is just a classification grouping of vitamins. They are only B vitamins because someone decided they fit in that group. Importantly they are water soluble playing roles metabolism and red cell production.
Converting food to ATP is an important and complex process. And being complex has many steps and many needed chemicals to achieve that goal. | 15 | 22 |
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Frustrated with how much of the philosophy I read I forget; how do you retain information from harder texts? | For example, right now I am reading Rawl's A Theory of Justice and am on chapter 2. I've reread chapter 1 a few times but even with this I forget the more nuanced arguments. Sure, I can remember his basic statements on equality but the purpose of the book itself (from my understanding) takes mostly well known principles like equality to a more abstract/higher level so there's not much to gain from just looking at an online summary. It's those abstract/ higher level arguments I struggle with retaining; Rawls is definitely not an easy read for me either.
I do well when there's imagery and such in a book because then I can connect events/arguments but when it's just primarily a sequence of arguments one after another I have to frequently look back at the notes I took when reflecting, and even then I'll forget many of the premises after a week.
The point is, while I can summarize, say a piece of history or the plot of a novel and have no issues, I struggle with memorizing deeper/higher level arguments Philosophers make. I'm not reading Rawls for a class so I don't have the benefit of lectures/ writing papers on him for better retention. In my general note taking process I try to write in the margins and summarize what I think the author is saying.
I guess I'm looking for a better way to read/ process/ take notes for harder philsophy texts I read.
EDIT: Thanks for the advice, I will definitely try more exercises that force me to engage with/understand the material like explaining it in layman's terms. | Try writing summaries in a way that someone who hasn't read the text will understand. Also try to compare and combine theories. It's easier to remember things that you are sure you understand. The best way to know if you understand something is being able to explain it. That's the point of the exercises of summarizing, comparing and combining.
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You could also try to draw conceptual models of theories as a visual aid. | 28 | 48 |
ELI5 what and why is mixing and mastering (music) good for? | Also, can i do it to my own music or must have someone objective?
Thanks reddit | 'Mixing' in this context means to mix the different channels. Every channel might represent one or more instruments/vocals/sounds. You mix them by adjusting the volume levels of each channel.
'Mastering' is the whole finish of the song which is done by applying equalizers, compressors, stereo effects etc.
Proper mixing and mastering ensures the right mix of channels, a clean composition with no unwanted interferences of frequencies and no unwanted overdrive.
You want your final track to be as loud as possible but still be dynamic and not overdriven, which is achieved with a limiter/compressor. You 'normalize' the track, that means you rise the overall level so the loudest part is near 0dB. You try to get an overall loud composition without any distortions.
All in all, you get the 'right sound'. The difference between amateur tracks and a major production.
You can do the mastering without any help but you need at least a pair of proper monitors (neutral studio speakers). Test your final track on as many different speaker combinations as possible. As soon as your track sounds awesome on a regular stereo, your computer speakers, your TV, in your car, on headphones and on a mono radio - then you got it.
Protip: Keep your mastering sessions under an hour. Your ears get used to the sound and start to gradually distort it so your result gets fucked up, which is pretty obvious when you hear it next day. | 13 | 73 |
Why are the psychological prime colors (red, blue, yellow) different from the mixing primary colors(magenta, cyan, yellow)? | Cobalt blue looks pure, niether greenish, nor purpleish, but the real primary color, cyan, looks like its just some random mix of green and blue. Cadmium red looks pure red, but the real primary color magenta is violetish color. If I mix pthalo blue and scarlet lake, I don't get purple. I get a near black. Is it training from childhood, or the way the brain works, or the color sensitivity of the cones on the retina, or some trait of light itself that causes this discrepancy? | Primary colors are defined relative to their application. The main gist is making the distinction of different ways wavelengths of light can be manipulated to absorb and reflect different colors. When a certain wavelength is reflected from a surface, it enters our eyes and we see the color. When a wavelength becomes absorbed by a surface, that color never reaches our eyes.
For the mixing of light like in old TVs and monitors, the primary colors used are red, blue and green and they are based on the premise that black is a complete lack of any wavelengths being reflected. The RGB color scheme is "additive", in that you start with black -- and mixing more colors increases the number of wavelengths that are reflected back to our retinas.
While for printing and pigment mixing purposes, cyan, magenta and yellow are used on the premise that white is the summation of all wavelengths of visible light. The CMY color scheme is "subtractive", in that you start with white -- and mixing more colors will *subtract* from the number of wavelengths being reflected into our retinas. After all, there is no such thing as a magenta wavelength... it is the result of green wavelengths being subtracted from white light.
So, the RGB colors are based on the premise of *adding* wavelengths to black to convey certain colors. By adding a whole buttload of wavelengths together (until they become pretty much a continuous spectrum), eventually *every* color becomes reflected and so what we see is white.
On the other hand, the CMY colors are based on the *subtraction* of wavelengths from white to convey certain colors by controlling which wavelengths are *not* reflected. So, eventually subtracting tons and tons of wavelengths means you will essentially absorb *all* colors, leaving you with black.
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ELI5: How do investigators figure out the cause of a fire, including the massive California wild fire? | It's not an easy task, because fire destroys the direct evidence.
However, there are signs that trained investigators can read within the context of what burned.
Example: in an apartment fire, maybe they notice that the ceiling is more damaged in a corner rather than in the opposite: so it's likely that the fire started there. If there's an electrodomestic like a TV or a fridge, it's even more likely that the cause is an electric problem.
Petrol and chemicals leave stains on the floor, and if they find multiple starting points, an arson is most likely involved.
Another example: if a parked car burns starting from the front, it could be some battery problem. But if the fire starts from the back wheels, someone could easily have put some ignition source. And so on | 15 | 32 |
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ELI5:When did the "Germanic tribes" transition from tribal form to its current form and how did it happen? Can Germans even trace their tribal affiliations anymore? | The Germanic tribes adopted Christianity (giving them permanent links to Rome and to other European groups) adopted writing, and transitioned into being feudal kingdoms. Feudalism started as little more than warlords pledging their loyalty to stronger warlords, with the various warlords controlling/protecting the peasants under them.
The Migration Period, around the time the Roman Empire fell, was a time of huge disarray in Europe, as the Huns pushed in from the East, displacing Slavic tribes, who displaced Germanic tribes, causing the latter to migrate and establish kingdoms all around Europe, some working as mercenaries for the Romans and some eventually conquering Rome itself.
The Germanic tribes then turned into feudal kingdoms. What is now Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire (which was ruled by Germanic kings) for most of its history.
But r/history or r/askhistorians could give you a much better and more detailed answer. | 12 | 38 |
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ELI5: Why is assisted suicide illegal but DNR's are legal? | They are both to end potential suffering and both require you to be mentally capable to choose that option. | The first is a request for someone to harm you and kill you. The second is a request for people to not give you medical treatment.
In general we acknowledge adults have a right to refuse medical treatment.
In the first example the action is taken by a doctor (or otherwise) and it leads to your death. In the second **in**action happens, the law generally considers action and inaction differently, that's the main point. | 213 | 349 |
ELI5: What are the benefits that zero-G environments provide to science or manufacturing? | At the moment its mainly for science. Not much commercial activity in space yet, outside of communication and observation satellites.
The main things that benefit from zero G are things to do with crystal formation, like alloys. Say you have a big pot of molten metal alloy. As it solidifies, some alloys form tiny crystals called dendrites. The way these dendrites overlap and intertwine determines the properties of the resulting alloy. In gravity dendrites are subjected to all kinds of convection currents, density fluctuations etc. As such, they grow in very irregular shapes and break before they grow too large. Therefore it is very hard to make an alloy that lives up to its theoretical properties. In space all these flows and currents are drastically reduced, or eliminated entirely. As such you get a much better alloy.
Same thing for many other things relating to crystal formation. Zero G allows for bigger, purer crystals.
If we look a few decades into the future, there are many things that could benefit from a space environment (provided launch costs go down, or we use materials readily available in space). Zero-G means you don't need to worry about support. This allows for much more versatile manufacturing methods. For example, right now silicium wafers used for semiconductor manufacturing are 300mm in diameter. Any bigger than that and the wafer flexes too much. In space the wafer won't flex due to gravity, as such you could conceivably have wafers tens of meters in diameter. Space is also a fantastic vacuum, which would really benefit semiconductor manufacture.
Another cool thing about space is that liquid droplets will quickly form perfect spheres thanks to surface tension. This is pretty useful for several industrial processes.
Zero G also allows you to mix normally unmixable gasses/liquids. Oil and water don't mix on earth, because the oil floats on top of water. In space they'll form a great emulsion for long periods of time. This allows for chemistry that's difficult or impossible on earth.
Space is also a great place for dangerous processes. If some industrial accident leaks thousands of tonnes of neurotoxics into the environment its a terrible disaster on earth. In space nobody would give a shit, outside of lost profit.
All in all, space manufacture would be pretty useful. But only if launch costs come waaaaay down, or we start exploiting asteroids and set up a nearly independent industry in space. | 41 | 50 |
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Why do grapes and raisins differ in health benefits? | What differences specifically are you referring to?
By weight, raisins have much higher caloric content, but that's just because a lot of the weight in grapes comes from water. That means 100g of raisins obviously contains a lot more sugar than 100g of grapes. Raisins also have higher mineral content (e.g. iron, calcium, phosphorus, etc.) for the same reason.
If you standardize by the *number* of grapes/raisins instead of by their weight, though, those differences disappear. Eat 50 grapes or 50 raisins and you'll get roughly the same amount of sugar, calories, iron, etc.
Even when accounting for the difference in water weight, there will still be less of many vitamins, polyphenolics, and flavonoids in raisins than in grapes, though, and those are often among the health benefits people talk about. There's two potential reasons for the differences. First, these are all complex organic molecules and are prone to degradation during the drying process. They basically break down into either simpler or related but different molecules that in most cases our bodies can't use in the same way as the originals. Second, grapes are actually still alive and undergoing cellular processes during the drying process and so they're relying on and consuming some of these molecules, particularly the ones associated with stress and oxidation responses in their cells because the progressive drying damages all of the cellular components. | 12 | 15 |
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ELI5: Why do different languages each have their own version of the same names? | Why is Joseph not Joseph everywhere? When did he become Giuseppe? Who decided that Guillaume should be William? When hearing a new name, why does a culture make its own version of it instead of letting every name stay at its root? | Names begin as a single name in a parent language like Latin and will be spread throughout the geographical area where that language is spoken (in the case of Latin, most of Western Europe.) However, languages change gradually over time, with speakers slowly but surely changing the pronunciation rules of individual letters/sounds. The interesting thing about those changes is that they tend to occur consistently across the entire language, instead of in small pockets. The names end up being pronounced differently because the descendent languages have changed how they pronounce the original sounds of the name. Often spelling used to change to match pronunciation, which introduces another way for names to drift.
As far as names adopted from other languages: remember that languages do not share the same sounds as each other. Many languages employ sounds that speakers of other languages simply cannot say correctly. Thus, many names couldn’t be adopted directly even if the adoptive speakers wanted to do so.
As to the idea of “why don’t they keep it the same?” — that’s treating a language like it’s a conscious entity. It’s not: a language is simply the sum total of everyone who speaks it. If everyone hears a certain pronunciation, they will follow suit. There is no overarching control over how the language changes. | 86 | 75 |
ELI5: My mind can make snap decisions or opinions instinctively, but it's very hard to articulate my reasoning. Why is that? | For example: I was just reading a post about female life expectancy being, in general and on average, longer than men.
One person chimed in 'there is a biological explanation for this, as grandmothers play a vital role in raising families and children'.
My mind instantly goes 'that is so incredibly stupid'. Now, whether or not that's true, somehow my brain leaps to a conclusion/opinion on the matter, and I even get annoyed by the statement.
But if someone challenged me back in conversation and asked me why that is such a bad argument, I find it difficult to respond and articulate why.
So, what is going in my head that 'enables' me to make snap reactions if there is no perfectly-formed conscious line of thought behind it? | Our brains have processes called heuristics.
You know how when you walk across the same place in the grass a lot, the grass dies and turns into a path? A heuristic is the same thing, but it's a pathway for thought. A pathway that gives you a shortcut around logic, because it's easier.
In your case, you've maybe heard a lot of people argue for an evolutionary basis for something they've noticed. Maybe you associate those arguments with people who have certain beliefs with which you disagree. Maybe you've seen those arguments debunked often.
Whatever the case, you've worn down a shortcut in your brain where when someone makes that argument, you just cut across to the part where you think it's bullshit. | 13 | 17 |
How much land does it take to support one human being? | How big does my plot have to be before I can support myself with vegetables and fruit? I live in the UK, so temporate and usually more than adequate rain. | >The minimum amount of agricultural land necessary for sustainable food security, with a diversified diet similar to those of North America and Western Europe (hence including meat), is 0.5 of a hectare per person. This does not allow for any land degradation such as soil erosion, and it assumes adequate water supplies. Very few populous countries have more than an average of 0.25 of a hectare. It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare–and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993]
From the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Note: .07 hectare = .17 acres | 102 | 270 |
ELI5: why do disposable razors with 5 blades not cause razor burn compared to a razor with 2-3 blades? | Good blades and good shaving practices will usually help you avoid razor burn, moreso than the number of blades.
But generally speaking, pulling, tugging, and scratching are the basic causes of razor burn. This can be on hair or skin.
Friction is one of the main reasons why this happens. While increasing blades increases the friction, it also increases surface area. This increases surface area decreases pressure placed on the skin at any one point of the blade, making it run smoother. Think of using your fingernail to scratch versus using your fingertip. Your nail is much thinner and applies that pressure in one specific spot, whereas your fingertip spreads that pressure over a larger area.
Perhaps the other important reason is that more blades increases the amount of hair that can be trimmed and stuck in the blade, decreasing the need for passing the blade again in the same spot (means less dry skin to blade contact). This also helps the blades to not wear out as quickly (less usage each day). | 67 | 83 |
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Eli5: How does a computer know how long 1 sec is? | Do they perform a series of calculations that take exactly 1s? Or am i looking at it completely wrong? | Computer Engineer here,
Timekeeping on computers (indeed, most electronic devices) is performed using two methods.
1.) A small quartz crystal that, when energised, oscillates at exactly 32,768 hz, is fed through an amplifier and bistable oscillating circuit. This assembly is often embedded within a real-time-clock circuit, which in some products can track the date and time down to the millisecond. 32,768 is exactly 2^15 which is extremely easy to count in logic. One second elapses every 32,768 oscillations.
Crystals that oscillate at other frequencies, such as 50Mhz, and 100Mhz are available as well. As long as the oscillating frequency is known and oscillation is reliable, a counting circuit can be constructed around it.
2.) Most operating systems include support for the Network Time Protocol. There are a large number of NTP servers on the internet, computers simply query these to periodically update their system clocks in the event that the RTC wanders a bit; timezone and DST can also be updated if sufficient information is known. | 101 | 91 |
ELI5:Can intelligent microscopic life exist? | I know "intelligent" is relative so let's say as smart as humans, for example. Is there a size limit for intelligent organisms? Seems like in our planet microscopic organism aren't very smart but can we know for sure? Like Tardigrades might be as intelligent as a dogs. We don't know. Do we? | Everything we "know" about "life" has to be qualified with the phrase "as we know it".
Life as we know it requires a certain degree of biological complexity to be intelligent, something microorganisms don't have. But we can't say for sure it's impossible; just that we certainly haven't found any examples of it, or evidence for it. | 26 | 36 |
How does light have the property of "bleaching" or removing color? | A photon is able to break down a chemical bond if it carries enough energy. The energy of a photon depends only on its wavelength. Some molecules absorb longer-wavelength photons without breaking, dissipating the captured energy by some other means, but will be damaged by a photon with short enough a wavelength. After being damaged, the structurally changed molecule may no longer be able to capture the longer-wavelength photons, affecting the color of the material.
Also, short-wavelength light can modify some molecules into chemically active forms that attack colorant molecules. | 32 | 66 |
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In quantum entanglement, how do we know that the entangled particle pair do in fact "interact" over a distance, and wasn't just aligned when they first interacted? | I don't know anything about this really, except for what I've learned from watching clips on youtube and reading wikipedia. But I'm sort of stuck with this question, and can't find an answer. It says everywhere that the attribute of the second particle measured is always opposite to the first one, almost no matter how close together in time the measurements are made, and how far apart they are in distance.
Sounds to me like they were aligned oppositely the whole time, after interacting with each other the first time. How do we prove this is not the case? | This is addressed by a result known as Bell's theorem.
In short, Bell's theorem proves the following. Suppose you build a theory in which particles' observable properties or attributes really do have definite values at all times (call this assumption R, for "realism"), and that nothing that takes place at one region of space can instantaneously affect the results of a measurement at some distant region of space (call this assumption L, for "locality").
Bell showed that, assuming these two results, the degree of correlation between the outcomes of two distant measurements of systems whose states were prepared in the same place is bounded by a certain number. So if your suspicion is true, and one can say the spins were aligned oppositely the whole time (that is if R is a good assumption), and assumption L holds, then when we actually carry out this experiment we should see correlations that do not exceed this certain bound.
However, a quantum-mechanical calculation of the results of this experiment predict a degree of correlation that exceeds that for the above case, when R and L hold. So if we do the experiment, and find that the correlation exceeds Bell's bound, then one of the assumptions (R,L) must be false, favouring the view of quantum mechanics, where things just don't have definite properties before measurement.
Finally, many such measurements have been carried out, and it is found that Bell's bound is exceeded, favouring the standard quantum mechanical view. However, two things should be noted:
1) many of these experiments have minor loopholes, and so don't technically show completely that the assumptions (R,L) taken together fail
2) even if the violation of Bell's bound is experimentally shown without any loopholes, we may still drop ONE of the assumptions (R,L) and have a theory consistent with quantum mechanics. For example, we can drop the locality assumption, L, and build a theory that satisfies realism R, which means that things do really have objective attributes before measurement, and still agree with the predictions of quantum mechanics. Such theories exist, the Bohm-de Broglie "causal interpretation" of quantum mechanics being one such notable example. In this interpretation of quantum mechanics, causal influences really do travel instantaneously. At this point, it is a matter of taste which interpretation one chooses. | 21 | 53 |
CMV: Employees Should Not Give Notice When Quitting | A few things first:
First, let me say that there are exceptions. Surgeons probably shouldn't quit without notice due to public health reasons. Attorneys shouldn't leave their clients unrepresented in court.
Second, anyone is free to do as they wish. I'm merely talking about what the norm should be. So on to it:
The largest part of my post focuses on those working in the corporate world. I believe the standard notice period of two weeks (or any notice period) is inappropriate. The reason for this is because:
1) If you are fired or laid off it will generally be on no notice with no out placement help or severance;
2) The impact to you being let go, in most cases, will be far greater than to the company should you up and quit; and
3) if the company wanted to secure notice, they should guarantee at least an equal term severance or pay you upfront at hire for the requested notice period.
Any "impact" to your team, even if you like everyone (manager included), is countered by the fact that the company would still let you go with no notice and no help. If a manager thought they could hire someone cheaper or better (at the same price), they would.
So, please, change my view.
Edit 1: Let me clarify, I'm arguing about what the norm should be. I agree employers may bash you for up and leaving. That's because we have a system where the expectation is two weeks. That should change.
Does no one else think it's manifestly WRONG for an employer to bash you to a future employer based on your last two weeks versus your entire tenure (which would be supported with actual performance reviews)? | You give notice because a good word from past employers of you being a good employee is very valuable to you. If the person you're interviewing calls up and the last thing they remember about you is you leaving without notice that doesn't look very good to the interviewer because it means you could do it to them too. | 28 | 25 |
ELI5: If humans and chimpanzees share ~98% of their DNA with each other, then why do human siblings share only 50% of their DNA? | Humans and chimps share 98% of the available selection of genes from which the choices which define an individual could be made. Human siblings share 100% of that measure - they share 50% of the actual choices which are made from that. | 51 | 15 |
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CMV: The pro-choice camp made a mistake opposing the "Born Alive" Bill | It's a pretty specific topic so here's an [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-blocks-bill-on-medical-care-for-children-born-alive-after-attempted-abortion/2019/02/25/e5d3d4d8-3924-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html) about what happened.
Basically it was a bill that requires doctors to give medical care to babies that were supposed to be aborted but was instead born alive.
I necer thought I'd post anything here due to the time commitment, but I really want someone to change my mind on this. IIRC only 4 Democrats voted for the bill, and I think the Democratic Party has plenty of intelligent people. I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm pretty much your stereotypical social justice warrior. I actually don't see anything wrong with the term and I pretty much embrace it. I'm pro-life and pro-choice; I think abortion is totally wrong but the government shouldn't be the one making the choice for women. For pro-lifers, that essentially makes me pro-choice.
I think opposing the bill is wrong because it has nothing to do with the woman's choice and everything to do with the baby born. As far as I know it doesn't force the woman to take custody of the child. It's completely medical and I think it completely aligns with the Hippocratic Oath. Somebody goes and gets an abortion, abortion was too late in the pregnancy, fetus comes out alive instead, so the doctors will have to give it medical care. What's so controversial about that?? | Medical practitioners are already required to give medical care to babies that are born alive. The problem with this bill is that it adds the _special_ requirement that a child born alive after an attempted abortion be "immediately transported and admitted to a hospital." This goes beyond the standards of medical care that are ordinarily provided for infants: there is no general legal requirement that an infant be immediately taken to a hospital. And this bill would effectively create the requirement that any abortion facility is equipped and located such that it can immediately transport an infant to a hospital. That would make it more difficult for independent abortion clinics to operate, and unnecessarily so. | 40 | 17 |
ELI5: Why do airplanes use green camo instead of blue? Wouldn't it make more sense, since they would be less visible on sky? | Thanks! | First, look at the purposes of camouflage on aircraft. In past and present years they had three different goals--disguise the aircraft on the ground, Disguise the aircraft in the air, or a scheme to make it difficult to judge an aircraft's distance away, speed, altitude, etc. Green camo falls into the first category.
Green camo was common decades ago (WWII for example), In those eras most reconnaissance was still completed by aircraft and bombings were done based on visual recognition--green camo made it difficult to see aircraft on the ground. Keep in mind that many of the airstrips of the time were simple and there weren't many hangers. Modern grey camo is the best choice for aircraft today. We don't see blue sky everyday and grey has been found to be the best choice for all weather conditions. In reality, camo matters far less today in an era of advanced radar, weaponry, and GPS. | 102 | 135 |
Is having fun a waste of time? | Like I like Overwatch, it's my favourite game. I don't like school that much, but is playing overwatch a waste of time? Should I be off getting educated?
edit: just to clarify, i do in fact do schoolwork and im doing well. I just like OW and sometimes i feel bad that maybe i play too much.
second edit: ty for the answers | Integrity means making choices that are consistent with your true self. It means leading an authentic life (Heidegger), it means becoming (Binswanger), and should ultimately lead to self-actualization (Maslow, Nietzsche). When one does not have the courage to make these decisions and move forward, one is just treading water and avoiding their life. This is an inauthentic life, or as Rollo May called it, self-alienation.
It may be that school is not the right choice for you which is why you can't bring yourself to engage with it. Or it may be that you have chosen the wrong type of academics. Or it may be that you just don't have the courage to do take the hard road and become yourself, instead opting for the path of least resistance.
Recreation and leisure are not a waste of time, there are noted health benefits, but still can be problematic if that is all you ever really do.
I would recommend thinking very hard about who you are, and what you want out of life, and then find the courage to achieve it. | 31 | 32 |
How much light is actually reflected by a mirror? | I know a mirror doesn't reflect 100% of light so what's the percentage and can anything actually
Reflect 100% of light | It depends on the material of the mirror, and also varies with wavelength of light. An ordinary bathroom mirror is likely to use an aluminum coating which is around 90% reflective in visible light. A mirror using silver is likely to be 98% reflective. Gold is very good at reflecting infrared but poor at reflecting green and blue light (which is why it looks coloured). Dielectric mirrors use many layers of nanoscale thickness to create 99.99% reflectivity at their design wavelength by means of constructive interference. | 2,081 | 2,673 |
ELI5: How is blood created in the human body? | Bone marrow, a tissue within your bones, contains special stem cells, These are the cells that can reproduce and then mature into specific types of cells. They form your blood cells and then release them into the bloodstream. | 13 | 16 |
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ELI5: What is the Multiverse and why do we think it exists? | I saw it on Cosmos, and don't understand the idea that there are many "bubbles" that each contain a universe. How does that reconcile with the Big Bang theory where space expands from one single point? How would a multiverse start? | In mathematics and physics, you can ask questions with mathematical equations or series of equations and proofs. Generally, without getting too far into it, when quantum physicists specifically address this question, the math sometimes suggests that multiple universe exist.
It takes some imagining if you don't understand such advanced mathematics. But generally speaking, equations tell us something about our universe, even simple ones like 1+1=2. These very clever and thorough physicists are trying to tell something bigger than that. And sometimes the math tells us that multiple universes must exist using the logic and math we understand. | 43 | 141 |
ELI5: How is it that large LCD flat panel displays have gotten so cheap?. I remember hearing 20 years ago that the LCD displays were created from a single crystal, but this can't be possible for the 100" panels now available. What advancement in manufacturing made this possible? | In a lot of cases it's not a major breakthrough, just progressive improvements in the process and tools. If you start out with 1 panel in 10 being defective, you're wasting a lot of time and materials and have to price the other 9 to compensate. Think about how common "dead pixels" were 10 years ago. Defect rates were so high that consumers were even willing to accept minor ones. Then as you continue to refine your process that number becomes 1 in 30, then 1 in 500, and as the amount of panels wasted to defects drops so does what you need to charge just to recoup costs. Couple that with economics of scale (sell more -> charge less) and you see substantial price drops. | 29 | 22 |
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ELI5: Why do most people talk to pets with a higher pitched voice? | Most people that I've met talk to their pets, or animals in general, with a higher pitched voice. Why is that? | Habit and social convention mainly
But pets (especially dogs) tend to respond more positively to higher pitched sounds than lower pitches. Most likely it has to do with the lower pitched sounds (like growls and deep barks) being more aggressive/negative then higher pitcher sounds (yelps, howls, playful barks) etc in the wild.
But mainly just because it's a habit people have gotten into. | 10 | 15 |
ELI5: Why are some books (mostly reference and educational books) printed with two columns of text, as opposed to novels with one column? | Reference and educational books tend to have smaller type than novels. Smaller type means more words per line and it is harder to make sure you don't skip a line while you are reading.
Also, information in textbooks and references tends to be much more dense than in novels. If you miss a word in a novel, you can usually figure it out based on context. If you miss a word in a reference text, it can be a much bigger problem. | 17 | 22 |
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While reading BC Science 7 for fun, I realized that the definition of a pure substance is extremely confusing. How do you define a pure substance? (Details in the text) | Original text:
>Is there anything that is not a mixture? What about a bar of pure gold? Pure gold contains nothing but gold. Every sample of pure gold has the same properties as every other sample of pure gold. For example, a nugget of pure gold from Barkerville, British Columbia, has the same melting point, hardness, and density as the nugget of pure gold from Yanacocha, Peru. Pure gold is an example of a pure substance. A pure substance is the same throughout. Every sample of a pure substance always has the same properties. Other examples of pure substances are helium, pure water, and white sugar. Pure substances are homogeneous materials. Homogeneous [hoh-moh-JEEN-ee-uhs] means that every part of the material would be the same as every other part.
For example, let’s take a piece of chocolate made up of 71% cocoa powder, 11% milk, and 18% water. Now, imagine that another piece of chocolate have the same composition. Then a whole supply chain of this chocolate. It is the same throughout. So is everything a pure substance, assuming that there is another thing on Earth(or beyond) with the same chemical composition? Is *everything* pure?
Then we realize that atoms in every sample of matter is made of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which technically means that it isn’t the same throughout. Electrons, neutrons, and protons are made of quarks, held together by gluons, so those aren’t the same throughout either. Is there such as thing as a pure substance? Are *all* things pure substances like I suggested in the first argument? Is there *nothing* such as a pure substance, like in my second argument? Am I overthinking this? Am I going insane and crazy mulling over this? | All of those substances can be described by a single chemical formula, and consist of a single atom or molecule. A gold bar is obviously just Au, helium is He, water is H2O and white sugar (sucrose) is C12H22O11. Purity for those can be defined as only having those atoms bonded together the right way - water usually isn't pure because it picks up ions from the ground or air around it - Chloride, Sodium, Iron, etc, so you can differentiate between normal water and pure water. These change its properties very slightly compared to all other samples of water.
Now we see how a piece of chocolate can not be pure - the cocoa powder, milk, and water are all chemically different things. They are different molecules and chocolate consists of a mixture of those molecules together. Milk and cocoa powder can't even be described by a single chemical formula - they are mixtures of chemicals together which makes a substance that it's easier for humans to label as a single thing. Chocolate can't be pure because chocolate can't be boiled down to a single atom or molecule.
Purity, however, does depend on what you are interested in. We can talk about "pure" chocolate being 100% cocoa even if that cocoa isn't chemically pure, because we only want to break things down to a chocolate/not-chocolate level when buying a chocolate bar. Same with a bar of gold - given that we can't break the gold atoms up into their parts without going to CERN, all we are interested in is the gold/not-gold level of the atoms in the bar, even if you could say it's a mixture of subatomic particles with different properties.
Does that help clarify things? | 23 | 26 |
ELI5:How does communication between two languages initially develop? | Usually via description of similar objects. For example, Dog in English is Perro in Spanish. Even if an English person didn't know any Spanish, and vice versa, they could both learn and establish that this furry four legged creature currently wiping it's ass all over the rug because it has worms, is known as dog/perro.
Source: Goddamnit we just had Stanley Steamer over last week. | 74 | 59 |
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ELI5: Why are tires black in color? Why not green or blue? | Carbon black is added to the rubber in tires to add durability. It’s possible to make tires in lots of colors, but they lack some of the durable features such as heat dissipation that tires with carbon black have. | 36 | 18 |
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ELI: How does muscle growth and decay work? | If I remember from biology class correctly, large muscles are a result from large sarcomeres, not more of them. So how does working out (i.e. tearing and rebuilding muscles) make them bigger? And why do they get smaller if they're not used? | Your body is like anything in life that needs "fuel".There are 3 Macro - Nutrients. Protien/Fats/Carbohydrates. Fats and carbs are the primary "fuel" and the protein is the building blocks or new cells. Exercise breaks down muscle fibers which causes micro tears. These are repaired stronger and bigger to try to stop the muscle breaking down again if enough protein has been consumed. Lack of protein will cause limited muscle growth and cause them not to repair to the same or or bigger than before. Too little carbs/fats your body uses stored body fat to fuel your body. Too little for long periods of time it then breaks down muscle as a final back-up to keep your body running. Too much fats/carbs creates fat cells in which the "fuel" can be stored for times when food isn't in constant supply.
Hope this helps :) | 32 | 54 |
How can a photon have a mass of zero without violating the mass - energy equivalence? | Photons are particles without mass. But whenever a system emits one, it loses a small fraction of its energy, and therefore its mass. However, the photon lacks mass and only transports energy, so conservation of energy is given, while conservation of mass is violated. If the photon is added to another system, the other system gains (although very little) mass.
So is a photon transporting mass without actually having any? I'm really confused right now, and might be I just miss something simple here.
Thanks in advance for any answers!
EDIT: Thank you all for taking the time to write these answers down. They did indeed clarify a lot, concerning my question and giving a lot of further, interesting information! | Yes, everything you've said is correct (for a particular choice of "system" versus "surroundings"). It's because mass is not exactly what you think it is. Mass isn't simply "the amount of stuff" in the system like you might've learned in introductory science classes.
Mass is just energy **not** due to the overall motion of your system as a whole. Since a photon has no mass, all of its energy is energy of motion (you could call it kinetic energy).
The mass of a system of particles is not simply the sum of the masses of the particles. So while photons have no mass, adding or removing photons from your system can change the total mass of the system. | 23 | 22 |
ELI5:Why is there CONSTANT road construction in most US cities? Are there not any long-lasting solutions? | The road industry has two seasons: plowing snow and repairing roads. Freeways are very long lasting solutions, and they only require repaving every 30-40 years. However, that means repaving 3% of the road every year, plus any new lanes that are added.
City streets and non-Interstate highways are not s long lived because they face another problem, right of way access. For convenience and protection, many localities put power and communications underground with water, gas, and sewer. If any of those 5 utilities need more capacity or infrastructure replacement, the road must be cut up. It doesn't pay to have a road that lasts so long that all 5 utilities get to dig it up, so repaving is more frequent. | 45 | 47 |
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[Wheel of Time] What did Elayne Trakand see during her Accepted test? | All she says about it is "I could not be that awful, Egwene. I just couldn't!" Any guesses as to what Elayne saw during her [Accepted test](https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Accepted_Test)? | The three tests loosely follow the pattern of past, present and future.
The first test would show Elayne's commitment to the White Tower measured against her history. Gawyn and Morgase would be in danger, perhaps with Caemlyn under siege from the False Dragon Logain. Elayne must leave them to their unknown fate to proceed.
The second test would measure her commitment versus her current life. Her new friends Nynaeve and Egwene are under attack in the White Tower from the Black Ajah, she must leave them to face possible torture and Turning to proceed.
The final test sets her against the future. Queen Elayne of Andor and the Dragon Reborn, Rand al'Thor stand against the Shadow at the Last Battle, joint leaders of the free world. The tide of battle turns and Rand is wounded and trapped, causing the morale of the Andoran army to break. Elayne must leave the fight when Andor most needs her, when Rand most needs her. | 26 | 39 |
ELI5: So I found out that space telescopes capture "colors" that weren't there to begin with and see in black and white. What colors are really present in our universe? | EDIT:
To clarify, the Hubble colorizes white and black images by adding colors to represent the spectrum. I'm just wondering "what colors are really present in our universe," as in, what colors are actually out there in space? Not how they color it. That's my bad. | You might be mistaking a few things, lots of telescopes CAN capture colour, others do not. When you see a false colour image it isn't that the microscope is detecting something that we dont see, false colours are just substituted for other values to make things easier to see. For example, we cant see infrared radiation, but we can detect it with IR cameras, however in order to make sense of the data we colour different values of IR detection with different colours to create a "predator vision" type of image that can be useful to us. Similarly there are lots of telescopes that dont operate in the visual spectrum, they detect xray, or IR, or gamma bursts or microwaves, or some other portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we give these wavelengths false colours so that we can more easily visualize them. | 16 | 53 |
Before and during a recession, what is seen as the “better” option: cash or real assets? Or neither? | Additional questions: does the attractiveness between these asset classes change when not in a recession? What is seen as the least valuable asset class during a recession? Why? | You can measure the risk of an asset in terms of the coefficient of variation between the real returns of the asset and consumption growth, sometimes called its "beta".
Assets with fixed nominal payments like Treasury bonds tend to perform well. Inflation tends to decrease when consumption falls, so the real returns on bonds go up. Because returns increase when consumption growth decreases. Bonds are said to be a "negative beta" asset as a result.
Assets like equities tend to do poorly. They are "positive beta" assets. Returns increase when consumption goes up. | 10 | 58 |
ELI5: Would people who are more intelligent, beautiful, and/or social than average be considered more evolved according to the theory of evolution? | I understand that all of these characteristics are relative or can be considered as constructed by the society. However, the majority of us can agree whether a guy is more handsome than another regardless of his race or nationality. Is a "handsome" guy more evolved than an "ugly" one?
Thanks | There is no "more" or "less" evolved; there is only *how fit they are to their environment.* But attractiveness can indicate certain markers of health:
There are lots of metrics and measures for "attractiveness." But there are definitely several that are hard-wired and purely biological, rather than cultural or social. And probably the largest and most influential of these is facial and bodily symmetry, where the sides and hemispheres of your face all match one another. This is not *the only metric of attractivness*, but symmetry is a huge part of that "wow" factor you feel the instant after looking at someone very attractive.
Chances are you see attractive people every day; but every once and a while, you've probably seen someone that was almost *otherworldy* attractive. Usually this beyond sexual - you can probably equally identify these factors in men and women, regardless of who you are sexually attracted to. These people are just instantly, magnetically attractive, well beyond the limits of attractiveness we're used to. In these cases, you're seeing someone who is on the very edge of the bell curve in terms of phenotypic expression of symmetry and genetic markers for health and fertility.
Symmetry is cross-cultural. In every culture and society, people with high degree of facial symmetry are considered more beautiful (there is also a theory that the reason "dancing" evolved simultaneously in many separate isolated human cultures was as a mating strategy to demonstrate excellent balance and coordination, which therefore indicated your body was highly symmetrical).
Facial symmetry is largely indicative of how healthy you were as a fetus. A growing human fetus can be subjected to a number of various illnesses and diseases that will disrupt the process of symmetrical facial and body growth.
People who are symmetrical, therefore, may be considered biologically "healthier". From a primitive perspective, these people would be better to procreate with, because your child with them would be more likely to survive, because its healthier in the womb.
Scientists believe there are actually other ways your immune system comes into play in determining attractiveness. The unwashed scent of a potential mate contains certain markers of their immune system. Several studies have shown that you are *most likely* to find someone attractive who has an immune system *much different than your own*.
This actually makes perfect sense, because again, your brain is selecting an individual *with whom your child would be most likely to survive*. If you combine your immune system with one much different than yours, you're giving your child the broadest possible immune system to fight off many different diseases (and also be more likely to develop into a symmetrical, attractive child).
Keep in mind though, again, that these are all generalizations. Symmetry doesn't *always* indicate health. And there are many, many other factors overlaid on top of this with which we ultimately determine attractiveness.
But your brain is *extremely* quick at picking up very small cues. So if you're ever out and about, and you encounter that rare person that is just so impossible attractive that they strike you like a bolt through the heart, where they almost seem like another race - in all likelihood, what you're seeing is just a perfect combination of symmetry, strong immunity, the perfect phenotypical expression of "good health."
**TLDR; no they're not more evolved: they simply have more physical cues indicating they will make a healthy, immunologically sound baby**
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How do directions work in space? | On Earth we have north, south, east, and west, but those are relative to Earth. What directions, if any, do people use for space? | There are a few different celestial coordinate systems, which tend to be used in different applications. Astronomers usually use an equatorial coordinate system, which describes the location of objects in the sky using two angles. Right ascension describes where an object is along the celestial equator (basically longitude), while Declination describes the angle from the equator (basically latitude). The equator is aligned with the Earth's spin axis to make observations simpler. Ecliptic coordinates work similarly, but align the equator to the plane of the Earth's orbit to work better within our solar system. There's also a galactic coordinate system, which aligns with the galactic plane and center.
For describing orbits of objects in a solar system, such as asteroids, usually a set of six orbital parameters is used. These parameters can be used to calculate where an object will appear in the sky at a particular time in an ephemeris table. For small objects, these parameters have to be updated frequently to account for perturbations by larger planets. | 257 | 674 |
What are some philosophical arguments against antinatalism other than the quippy “If life isn’t worth living, why are you here?” | Title | A few points that are commonly targeted:
* The argument for axiological asymmetry between goods and bads is hard to define/justify without resorting to conceding that it only works within certain meta-ethical frameworks. E.g. deontology and intuitionism and the example of non-existent martians' absence of suffering being a good thing, but their absence of pleasures being neutral.
* Where is the distinction point between antinatalism and promortalism - Benatar argues for annihilation as an inherent contributor to the badness of death, and this combined with the free will of an already existing being can take precedence over the initial asymmetric calculus when considering a 'being' that is yet to exist (hence the delimiter between a life worth starting vs a life worth continuing). This depends on views on the badness of death itself, i.e. Epicureanism vs the deprivation account, as well as views on free-will and rationality in people with depression and other mental health issues.
* The point at which an embryo/fetus becomes sentient is still debated as it relies on views on personal identity.
* The tendencies for humans to ignore empirical/a posteriori 'bads' of existence and of pollyannaism (to overrate the quality of their lives) are difficult to dispute without telling people their opinions don't matter and they're mistaken. How much value should be placed on people's subjective opinions about their own life quality when humans tend to adapt to their circumstances and regress to an happiness mean.
* Antinatalist misanthropic arguments can also be challenged from a utilitarian perspective, which depends on the ascribed value of non-human animals and the negative effects humans can have on other conscious beings, directly or indirectly. E.g. if we were to say that non-human animals can't suffer, then the misanthropic argument would be severely weakened.
edit: clarity, spelling | 56 | 109 |
ELI5: How does one word end up meaning several, completely different things? | Synonyms make sense, but a word like "match" have at least three different meanings that have nothing on common. | The borrowing of a related word from another language which becomes the original word's main meaning. A good example is the English word "magazine", originally a French word meaning something like "warehouse" or "storehouse" and retaining that meaning when talking about a ship's powder magazine. Then in the late 1700's in France there appeared a new regularly published literary anthology called "Magasin des Histoires" or warehouse of stories. The format proved hugely popular both inside and outside of France and spawned many imitations, which in English became known by their French name, "magazine". | 19 | 30 |
Eli5 how people stay alive during surgery | I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around how people can survive certain kinds of surgeries. For example, stuff like organ transplants, open heart surgery, brain surgery, etc. How is it that a stab wound can be fatal but we’re also able to cut open people, rearrange their insides a bit, and sew them up? Wouldn’t they die of blood loss or because a critical organ is removed during a transplant? | Biologist here
Generally, we have a collection of advanced machines that can supply oxygenated blood to the body, we can use machines to circulate blood while we stop your heart to work on it, and we can cut flow off to organs to remove and replace them.
As long as blood flow is provided to the brain and organs, its easy to keep someone alive for as long as we need to provide care, using blood transfusions, we can keep enough blood in the body's circulatory system to keep someone alive | 41 | 35 |
[DC] how did superman age when he was young but doesn't seem to age now that he is older? | Maturing and aging are actually independent processes. There are kids with a condition that causes them to age prematurely and it doesn't make them grow any faster, there are adults with a condition that makes them stop physically maturing too early but it does not give them biological immortality.
Ergo it is quite safe to assume that people of his species mature at a rate equal to humans but do not age as quickly. | 78 | 51 |
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ELI5: How can a diary be admissible as evidence? Couldn't it be completely forged the night before? | I see diaries often mentioned as great tools for keeping organizations honest and a few big political cases where diaries or personal journals became major evidence.
Is it just so the journal-keeper can keep better track of his or her own memories better or are they validated in some way?
edit: The ELI5 gist I'm getting is that it's usually considered something along the lines of a verbal testimony, and not usually used by itself to decide a case, but that there are a lot of variables involved such as how important the diary evidence might be, and it has the added weight that it's already written and cannot be changed later. And there are ways to at least validate that it was written when it was claimed to have been written.
Thanks for the answers guys! | They can be evidence as much as any other written document can be. Yes, a diary could have been forged. But so could any other written document. Just like a witness might be lying, computer evidence falsified or any other kind of evidence corrupted. Evidence has to be critically examined to ensure that, as best as can be determined, it's genuine.
For example, if the relevant diary entry was in a different hand, different pen and on a page stapled into the rest of the diary, there would be good grounds for assuming it was false. | 67 | 96 |
[Star Trek] Food dispensers produce any quantity of virtually any delicacy you can think of. Why isn't obesity rampant in the Federation? | I know for sure if I had unlimited food at my disposal I know I would snack like crazy. A food dispenser that beams anything I want into existence? Yeah I'd be crazy fat.
There must be people like that among the billions of Federation citizens, and if contemporary obesity figures and probable causes are to be considered, that issue must be more widespread among many billions than it is today. So why isn't it the case? Or is it? | Under the presumption that caloric intake, fat content, and whatnot are taken into consideration and [easily] modified by the replicator as appropriate. Plus, have you ever noticed how busy Feds are? All those electronics to play with, it's amazing they don't forget to eat. | 51 | 80 |
ELI5: What are the differences between all these awards show ? | The Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Emmys, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Academy Awards, the People's Choice awards .... There are so many different ones and I'm not so sure what the differences between them are. It seems some of the categories overlap as well. What's the difference between all of them ? | Each award belongs to a different group.
The Grammys for example are given out by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for outstanding work in the music industry.
The same group gives out the: Emmy Awards (television), the Tony Awards (stage performance), and the Academy Awards/Oscars (motion pictures).
The specifies for each award are on Wikipedia. | 10 | 18 |
CMV: Laws against holocaust denial is a bad thing. | In Germany and Austria, holocaust denial laws are a historical legacy.
In the decades after WW2, those countries were such a mess that they could not afford to adhere to lofty ideals of absolute free speech. They had to be pragmatic in order to rebuild a civilized society. De-nazification was part of that effort. It is hard to imagine just how brainwashed society was. It is difficult to fix that without restrictions on free speech.
Nowadays, these laws are no longer necessary, but repealing them would send the wrong message and offend a lot of people, so Austria and Germany are stuck with them.
These laws are not as illiberal as they seem. You are not going to go to prison for denying the holocaust while talking to someone on a bus stop. In practice, only the people who express these views to larger audiences get prosecuted.
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Will China fail? | According to Why Nations Fail, China appears to have a significant amount of the issues seen in failing nations, albeit does seem to have fairly strong institutions.
So the question is, can China avoid the fate of states with their similarities, by massive state spending on developing an innovative knowledge run state, or is it destined to fail?
Edit: I realise it's a more normative than positive question, but still interested. And not looking for some crappy communist capitalist slap fight either. More interested in extactive vs inclusive societies and how that may manifest in China's future. | Acemoglu’s work doesn’t describe a binary — there aren’t just failed or successful states — a country’s institutions can fall on a spectrum of more or less inclusive.
Eg, maybe Sweden or wherever is extremely inclusive, Spain a little less so, Malaysia has serious flaws, and somewhere like Equatorial Guinea is a truly failed state. And each will reach some steady state economically — E. Guinea will have most people dirt poor until it has better institutions, Malaysia will be better off than most places but not truly rich, Spain will be rich but not as rich as it could be with better institutions, and Sweden will be somewhere near the top.
China went from having some of the worst institutions in the world, which caused mass famines, disease, suffering, and cultural destruction, to a place where most people can at least have a shot at an education, a modest wage, and can even maybe start their own business. Accordingly, they’ve gone from a dirt poor country to one that’s still fairly poor (gdp per capita is in the ballpark of Brazil or Mexico) but not destitute.
Maybe it will get better institutions, maybe worse, but one might expect it to stay about the same. And it could plausibly stay that way for a long time, and be quite stable.
Maybe economic success has some link to stability, but that doesn’t mean somewhere economically unsuccessful can’t be politically stable for a very long time. It’s not a ticking time bomb.
Also, just because of Chinas sheer population, even reaching moderate success economically gives the CCP enough resources to be a superpower.
So, it’s complicated, but there’s no reason to expect an implosion just on economics alone. | 71 | 183 |
ELI5: How do speakers generate sound? | Subquestion: why is it that smaller heaphones usually can't product strong bass sounds compared to bigger speakers? | What we know as sound is our response to pressure waves in the air around us. The frequency (how close together) and amplitude (the size) of these waves make different sounds.
A speaker creates pressure waves by moving a cone back and forth. By moving at different speeds and over different distances, it creates waves of specific frequencies and amplitude. The cone of the speaker has a magnet attached to it. Near that magnet inside the speaker housing is a coil of wire. When electricity is run through the coil of wire the magnet gets pulled toward the coil. When the electricity in the coil stops, the magnet springs away from the coil due to the shape of the speaker cone. Running electricity through the coil at differing frequencies and for differing durations cause the speaker cone to move sound waves at various frequencies and amplitudes.
Headphones usually have very small speaker cones and very small magnets. Because of this, they are usually not very good at creating low frequency sound waves. | 13 | 22 |
Why is it so hard to build robots that have more fluid motion? | [This](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/canadians-teach-darwin-to-ice-skate-play-hockey?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29) may be more ground-breaking than I realize but I'm trying to understand why we haven't seen more capable robots by now? Asimo, I suppose is the most impressive one I've seen so far. What limitations are preventing us from building a robot that has human-like or even animal-like gait. Something that can move faster and quickly change direction.
EDIT: I forgot about [PETMAN](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mclbVTIYG8E). It would be impressive to see it run and change direction in one smooth motion. | Engineer who does robotics here.
First of all there's very little to gain for "fluid" motion from a practical sense. Industrial robots are designed to lift a load, do a motion efficiently not necessarily look human-like when they do it.
second. Human motion is much more complex than it looks. Anyone who's been around a baby learning to walk you can see the brain and coordination isn't just there yet and they constantly fall over.
A human gait is not statically stable. That means if you were to stop all motion half way through your step you would fall over. Robots like Asimo are stable throughout their entire step that means if you were to cut power to asimo half way through it's step it would just remain frozen and not fall over.
This is because most robots are designed such that the center of gravity is always over their foot, eveyrthing is perfectly balanced so that the robot won't fall over. Humans on the other hand are not. We can't even sleep standing up because we would fall over.
So why don't we make robots that are dynamically unstable like humans? The answer is that it's much much much more difficult. Humans have a lot of feedback mechanisms like their inner ear, and nerve cells throught their feet and legs letting them know how much weight is on each foot and if they are falling over etc. If even one of these systems breaks the system generally doesn't work. For exmaple ear infections cause dizziness, and if your leg falls asleep or is numbed you can barely support yourself. Having a multiple feedback loop system is much more difficult to program. It's a field of active research, but the technology just isn't there yet. | 27 | 19 |
ELI5 why it can be too cold to start a fire | I was scrolling through youtube shorts and stumbled across [this scishow short](https://youtube.com/shorts/fCv6a5jYWa8?feature=share) from Hank explaining how it can literally be too cold to start a fire.
I did not know this possible and his explanation did not make sense to me. Can someone either break down what he said into something more manageable, or explain it in a different way? Thanks!
also PLEASE don't eat me alive if I flaired this wrong. I failed chem. I never took physics. I have received five different answers on whether or not this is a "physics", "chemistry", or "other" flair. | Fire needs three things: heat, fuel, and air/oxygen. That’s because the chemical reaction for combustion needs three things: energy, a “reducer” and an oxidizer. If the fuel/oxygen mixture isn’t hot enough, it won’t ignite; think about gasoline vapors when you fill up a car. The fuel (gasoline vapor) and oxygen (air) are mixed, but it’s not hot enough to ignite.
Usually an open flame (a lit wick or match) or a spark are hot enough to ignite the fuel. However, if the air is extremely cold, it’s possible that the air pulls away heat faster than the reaction can generate it. Therefore, the fire will go out; think about blowing out a match. You’re putting **more** oxygen into the fire; that’ll just make it worse! Except you’re taking away heat at the same time; if you take away heat faster than the additional oxygen can burn with the fuel, the fire will go out. | 62 | 21 |
CMV: 20% Downpayments for Houses are Unrealistic | So, I've been looking at purchasing a home in the next few years. All of the calculators and tools that I've seen assume a 20% downpayment plus closing costs out of pocket. Yet, all of the banks around me are advertising no or low-money down loans.
Given the economic trends in the housing market and the current rate of inflation, it seems nearly impossible for the average person to save up 20% of a loan for a house and be able to pay that up front. It also doesn't appear that 20% is really the norm any more. Accordingly, I believe that we should stop giving out this outdated advice. It is contributing to the low rate of home ownership. | In the US you can get a loan for less than 20% down, but typically you'll be required to maintain mortgage insurance that adds 0.5-1% of the loan balance per year. The advice is just that it's easier to qualify and costs a lot less to borrow if you have a 20% down payment. | 673 | 1,162 |
ELI5: Why, when someone dies from something that does not permanently damage anything vital, they can not be "restarted" or brought back to life? | Just wondering why, for example, if someone is cut and loses enough blood and dies, they can't simply "replace" the blood and get everything working again? I get that if someone's brain or heart is damaged and can't be repaired then they can't be resuscitated... but what makes every form of death completely permanent? Like if someone drowns, I imagine everything is undamaged; why can't they be brought back to life? | Blood is the method that the body uses to distribute oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. Without blood, your brain isn't going to get oxygen, which is actually what kills you, not the blood loss itself.
Same goes for drowning: You're not getting O2 to your brain, so your brain dies. | 10 | 23 |
ELI5: Why does Benford's law apply to so many different data sets? Why is a leading digit of 1 so much more common than 9? | This blows my mind and I can't understand the explanations easily.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
Benford's Law, also called the First-Digit Law, refers to the frequency distribution of digits in many (but not all) real-life sources of data. In this distribution, 1 occurs as the leading digit about 30% of the time, while larger digits occur in that position less frequently: 9 as the first digit less than 5% of the time. Benford's Law also concerns the expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution.
This result has been found to apply to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, physical and mathematical constants, and processes described by power laws (which are very common in nature). It tends to be most accurate when values are distributed across multiple orders of magnitude. | Take a set of prices in a shop, and then add in inflation at 3%. An item will spend a long time with a 1 as the leading digit.
EG
Year 1 £100
Year 2 £103
Year 3 £106.01
...
But when it gets to a higher number as the leading digit, it spends less time with that leading digit:
Year X £900
Year X+1 £927
Year X+2 £954.81
Year X+3 £983.45
Year X+4 £1012.96
Then it's back to a 1, and will spend a long time with a 1 as the leading digit, then slightly less time with a 2, etc.
Benford's law is a consequence of exponential growth/distribution of numbers. So as long as a shop starts with a random distribution of prices, after many years of exponential growth, the 9s will tick over to 1s faster than the 8s tick up to 9s, creating the distribution. | 42 | 33 |
eli5: If the US is a net exporter of oil, can’t we easily become self-reliant for oil? | Am I just confusing crude oil for “petroleum products”? Or is there too much money exchanging hands? I’m just confusing by all the rhetoric around us being dependent on foreign oil when statistically speaking all the data I see shows 1) the US produces more oil than any other country in the world and 2) we export more than we import. So what gives?!?!? | There are different types of oil, Heavy/Light describes one aspect and Sweet/Sour is a terminology for the amount of sulfur. Years ago we invested heavily in factories that handle Heavy Sour oil. Turns out after the Shale breakthrough to all that oil in the US, we have much more Light Sweet then we estimated. It’s not impossible to retrofit and refit our factories but it’s vastly cheaper to just import Heavy Sour and export the Light Sweet.
Edit: Props to u/veemondumps for a great thorough description | 68 | 51 |
Do each ring on trees actually signify a year or does the amount of time vary? Do the differences in color signify weather changes? | Does* lol | The rings signify rate of growth. Since trees grow different amounts at different times of the year, we get the rings.
Interestingly, the annual rings even exist in trees that grow near the equator.
Differences in colour are due to all sorts of environmental factors; you can track forest fires, drought, flooding, beetle infestation and many other things through ring colour and texture.
[edit] an s | 63 | 93 |
Why is it so hard to cure baldness? | What exactly are the challenges that make this such a difficult task, despite all the other amazing advancements in medical science? | our current advances in medical science excel at repair. if you broke your leg, we can easily repair it. if you cut your finger off, we can likely repair it with some luck and skilled surgeons. what we cannot do is grow a leg or finger back. on a similar vein, we have products like rogaine that can be used to maintain the current hair follicles but we do not have the tools to grow them back where they've died/atrophied (apart from a hair follicle transplant). | 12 | 15 |
Is there a limit to wireless connection speed? (Internet) | With all the recent posts about increasing data speeds, such as:
the 5G coming in S. Korea and and the proposed deal between the UK and Germany, as well as the new 800Gigs/sec cables Intel is making soon - I was wondering what limits are on wireless connection speeds.
Thanks in advance. | Technically the limits are...
1. The frequency of the transmission, which partly determines the data rate.
2. The energy requirements of said frequency to broadcast it over any distance (the higher the frequency the more energy required to broadcast it over distance).
3. The ability of the recipient to receive and process the data
4. The error correction algorithms managing to correct any errors in the data to product a stable data stream.
If those obstacles can be overcome theres no reason why you can't increase the data rate again and again. | 14 | 32 |
ELI5: Why do people claim to know how many illegal immigrants are in the United States? | If someone is illegal, there's no documentation on them, right? I realize the numbers are estimates, but I can't imagine how these estimations are even close if there isn't any hard data. | There are multiple ways to estimate the illegal population. These include economic impact, public service usage, population samples, the census, and migration tracking.
Economic impact looks at levels of spending and the flow of money to determine the population involved in the economy. We can compare this to the documentation we do have to find who is missing. We can also use this method to determine the black market size and under the table economy sizes, these are how illegal immigrants are paid.
We can also use data on public service usage to estimate size. Hospital visits, public school enrollment, and arrests all alow use to sample the population.
Population samples, the census, and migration tracking are forms of mass and local data collection taken on by the government. The data collected can be compared to know populations and communities to adjust for errors such as non-reporting by the population themselves. | 14 | 40 |
What does the term "imaginary time" mean Stephan Hawking uses in the context of cosmology (or if it's related what does it mean in quantum mechanics)? | It's a mathematical trick which you can use to simplify certain problems, or connect different areas of physics. The underlying idea is this: when we talk about space and time as this one thing called *spacetime*, what we mean is that we're defining a notion of distance that combines both *spatial distances* between places and *time intervals* between events. Remember the Pythagorean theorem? If you have two points separated on the x-axis by a distance x, and so on, then the distance s between them is given by
s^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^(2).
Now let's say we have two *events*. They're separated spatially by distances x, y, and z along those axes, and they happen some time interval t apart. The *spacetime distance* between them is (ignoring gravity, which changes this)
s^2 = -(ct)^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^(2),
where c is the speed of light. Notice the minus sign in front of time. That minus sign is what makes the time dimension "timelike." This means that if you replace time with an imaginary variable, i.e., write t = iτ where τ is some imaginary number, then we get rid of that minus sign, and the spacetime distance becomes just a spatial distance,
s^2 = (cτ)^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^(2).
That's just the *spatial* Pythagorean theorem in four-dimensional space (not spacetime).
τ is imaginary time. If we write our problems in terms of τ, rather than t, then the time direction looks just like any spatial direction. It stops being special. This makes it easier to mathematically understand certain problems. But it's fundamentally just that, a mathematical tool. | 65 | 146 |
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Peter Singer on vegetarianism | For my college moral ethics class we have been studying moral ethics around animal rights/interests. I recently read "All Animals are Equal" by Peter Singer and just wanted some more clarification regarding his utilitarian view on reasons for vegetarianism.
So far, I've deduced that he believes that people should become vegetarian because killing animals causes pain and suffering which is not in the interests of the animals. Because it eating animals causes them pain and suffering, we should not eat meat because the pain outweighs the pleasure that is derived from eating meat.
I am just slightly confused because he argues that animals have equal consideration but at the same time says that not all living beings are equal but if not all living beings are equal, what is the reason as to why people should convert to vegetarianism?
On another note, if it was painless to kill an animal, would Singer say that is okay to eat meat?
Also, if I've analyzed anything incorrectly, please feel free to correct me! I would like to grasp this concept as best as I can! | He claims that all living organisms that feel pleasure and pain, that are sentient, deserve equal moral consideration. He has a quote where he says "moral considerability lies somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster". This is because shrimp are sentient but oysters are not, despite being animals. Plants are also living but don't feel pleasure or pain, are not sentient, and so don't deserve the same moral considerability.
Yes, he has claimed that if you could kill an animal quickly, painlessly, and away from other animals which it's death would cause distress towards, and that the animal could save the lives or alleviate the suffering of others, killing it could be moral. But as a utilitarian, he is kinda obligated to this, even with humans. But, that isn't a reason to support the animal agriculture industry since they do not operate like that and because animal products are not needed for survival 99% of the time in humans. | 63 | 36 |
ELI5: Medicare in the United States | I quickly read the Wikipedia of medicare and it said that it is for senior citizens in the Wikipedia but what I've heard sometimes is that it is the United State's version of universal Health Care. I guess I'm just confused, could somebody clarify for me?
Thanks | Medicare = government-provided medical aid for seniors
Medicaid = government-provided medical aid for the poor
The former is for all people that are 65 or over, the latter is only for those that qualify. Some have considered expanding medicaid to the point where it eventually becomes universal health care, but it's not anywhere near as robust/helpful as true universal health care seen in countries like Canada. | 24 | 50 |
Do the potatoes in my kitchen have an immune system? | I was thinking about how the potatoes I'm cooking are in some sense alive since I had to cut the sprouts off them before peeling them. So it got me thinking, if they're alive then they must have potential pathogens that can infect them. So the next obvious step is that they should have an immune system of some sort. Do they? | Basically yes but not in the kind people usually refer to when they say 'immune system'. Higher animals have adaptive immune systems and this is what comes to mind when people think of the immune systems; the active part that involves circulating IgE antibodies, learnt immunity and a whole raft of white blood cells.
Plants don't have this kind of system. Instead plants have what is called an Innate Immune system which in plants roughly divides in to two main branches. The first recognises and deals with common microbial molecules and will recognise all sorts of bacteria harmful or not. The second branch copes with virulence factors; usually chemicals or proteins produced by microbes once they are inside the host cell.
If either of these systems are activated the plant mounts some form of defense, this could be killing the infected cell, building some kind of "wall around the infection", or producing toxic chemicals.
The first innate immunity branch is largely made up of receptors on the surface of all the plant's cell. These recognise common features on the surface of infecting cells. Typically these are features which are slow to evolve (essential to the infecting cell). Once an infecting cell is recognised then the cell switches on it's defense processes.
The second branch of defense happens inside the plant cell. If a microbe gets inside the cells then the defense proteins allow the plant to recognise the 'invader' or chemicals the invader is producing and switch on the responses. These internal recognition proteins are encoded by R genes (resisitance genes) and plants typically have a great many R genes often quite specific to the plant's principal pathogens.
Edit: worth noting all living things which can resisit infection have some form on innate immunity of varying degrees of complexity. It's a particular area of study in plants in large part because of wanting to understand how crops resist pests | 12 | 20 |
CMV: Crime in the ghetto isn't due to just poverty, it's due to violent & drug culture | [Looking at the list of countries by homicide rate,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) there are countries which have generally much worse poverty than ghettos, yet astonishingly low homicide rates.
In the slums of Indonesia for instance, murder is almost nonexistent. Yet, compare the living conditions of someone in the ghetto, and it's vastly better than those of the [poorest in Jakarta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Jakarta_slumhome_2.jpg).
Even if you say guns are the main issue, since you need a license to own a gun in Indonesia, if you just look at non-gun related homicide, the ghetto still has a far higher rate of homicide via stabbings and beatings than that of Indonesia.
Education isn't the issue. The quality of inner-city education is still leagues better than those in these slums, where kids often must quit school at a very young age to [become workers or prostitutes.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Indonesia)
In some of these slums, there are no bathrooms, or running water for miles. You simply cannot argue that the ghetto even approaches how bad these living conditions are.
There are also far fewer safety nets in the slums. There's no food stamps, and there's no medicaid, and there's no subsidized housing.
| The way crime manifests itself differs between community / across society, poverty has some impacts that transcend boundaries, but the way people live in poverty deal with then more 'generic' aspects of poverty (lack of resources) will depend on the place they live in, and what options they have available to them. The options they have available will depend on many things, culture, law, politics, ideologies / beliefs etc, demand and supply systems will be similar in principle / process but will involve the acquisition, processing and distribution of different products and services.
Many places across the world focus on other crimes that, in the ghettos of the West are relatively uncommon, think organ and people trafficking. Such things are more common in Asia, Eastern Europe etc, where due to differences in socio-economic and political standing, and the society itself, offers different opportunities for making money / alleviating many of the symptoms of poverty.
At the end of the day, people in precarious situations, or those whose survival is unclear, will be more likely to set aside their morals and engage in controversial activities. What results is an almost cyclic underworld economy and society, that utilises the same economic model as the rest of society, but seeks profit out of activities that are significantly regulated by laws, or outright illegal, bypassing the aforementioned regulations.
This is not ideal, but if your kids are starving and family need food, nourishment and shelter, your consideration for your neighbour, or people outside your community becomes distorted, as your priority is yourself and your immediate environment.
Those in more stable communities have the time, and resources to contemplate and consider the lives of others, they have the capital, agency and autonomy to benefit and change the lives of others without significant detriment to their own, as a result they have the time to muse over others circumstances and suffering, and are therefore less likely to engage in controversial activities.
That does not stop people, many people with stable jobs, great educations etc, will engage in illegal / morally questionable activities to further their position socially, economically, or politically. Each person and their circumstances is different, despite appearing on the surface, relatively similar. | 12 | 29 |
ELI5: Why can mathematics and physics simulate natural phenomena so closely in thought experiments, calculations and computer programs? | Because mathematical and physics models that do not correspond closely to reality are deemed incorrect and not used, then the scientists get to work trying to fix what is wrong or looking for a new approach. Your question is quite like asking why a car is so good at travelling on roads: because the attempts at building a car that resulted in something that really sucked at travelling on roads are simply not selected for mass production. | 321 | 172 |
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French vs German for continental philosophy | I'm currently a senior in high school and plan on majoring in philosophy next year, and after that would most likely pursue graduate studies in philosophy. I've already done a fair amount of self-study and, after taking a very broad look at the history of philosophy, have started to hone in on continental philosophy as my main interest (for the sake of argument, let's say Hegel onward (plus Spinoza), with a specific interest in Merleau-Ponty). To bolster this interest and to get a head-start on skills that will be useful for graduate studies, I'm thinking of trying to learn either French or German. Here are my main considerations and questions:
1.) **Reading primary sources.** For me this is sort of a wash--there's Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc., but there's also Ponty, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Iragay, Deleuze, etc. (although I'm not as familiar with the later French philosophers, so it's harder for me to gauge my interest; they also sort of have a bad connotation of pretentious French naval-gazing and after reading *Simulacra and Simulation* I'm pretty weary of any poststructuralism/postmodernism...ok maybe German does have the slight edge, but David Abram really has made me fall in love with Ponty...)
2.) **Reading secondary sources**. This one I know almost nothing about, but I think it is the most important. Which language would give me the wider access to secondary commentary and contemporary continental literature? I suspect that a lot of continental research and scholarship never gets translated into English, so which language is more fundamental for academic/dissertation purposes? I know this somewhat depends on where in continental philosophy I decide to really hone in on, but maybe there is a general consensus on which is more useful, and more widely used, in this regard? Maybe another way of phrasing the question would be: For the purposes of research, which is more indispensable?
3.) **German vs French universities.** I know this is sort of getting outside of my original scope, but if I'm considering doing graduate studies in the continent (this seems fitting given my interest in *continental* philosophy), would I find one or the other more useful? or are they about equal?
4.) **Ease of self-study.** Ultimately, I'll probably have to learn both (plus maybe Attic Greek), but which one does it seem more realistic to try to tackle by myself. For background, I'm in AP Spanish and have a pretty good grasp of the language (I joke that I'm just a month's stay in Spain away from fluency), so I feel like I would basically already know French grammar, not to mention the cognates from Spanish, as well as the Latinate cognates that came into English through Norman French. On the other hand, English is a Germanic language, so maybe the same would hold true for it (although I've heard that everyday English is Germanic and academic/literary English is Latinate, i.e. French).
I'd really appreciate any advice you all could give and I'd be happy to provide any more detail you might want
*Vale* | I won't comment on primary sources as you've got plenty of time to decide, but learning another language is always good. Your idea about French is approximately correct, in that familiarity with any other Romance language will be a major advantage (though there's a big difference between basic grammar and literary writing). On the other hand,
>English is a Germanic language, so maybe the same would hold true for it
Not exactly. While German borders on English in some ways, it has very different grammatical rules (including three genders and some remarkably idiosyncratic conjugation).
In the end, studying either (or both) on your own will give you a leg up on academic language study later on, and developing new listening/pronunciation skills is a good idea even if you don't end up going further, so you can't really go wrong. | 16 | 36 |
What kind of jobs/internships do people with B.As in economics get? | So i just finished my first year of undergrad, and im kinda lost. I had to declare my major in the beggining of the school year, and i choose econ and compsci without haven taken courses in either of those two classes before, because why not. I found that I enjoyed both my majors, but i have no fucking clue what kind of jobs or internships I can get into once I graduate; to be honest outside of being professors I have no clue what econ majors actually do; I just chose this major because I liked the freakonomics podcast.
Please help. | I started out as a Business Analyst / Business Intelligence Analysts / General Accounting bod at a large bank. It was fine. It pays pretty well and it led to more interesting things.
You will need to have something more than just an BA to get a job. Just some proof you can actually work with people to some sort of goal & can communicate with people as an adult. | 16 | 30 |
ELI5: Why does nature like square roots and cube numers? | Late bloomer when it comes to physics here but I wonder why nature is first of all describable in such a precise way with numers and letters and why nature even "obeys" to square roots and cube numbers.
Take for example Newton's law of universal gravitation:
F=GMm/R²
As far as I know, the idea of square roots and cube numbers were invented some time BC, so way earlier than any serious physical discoveries regarding gravitation. It would make sense to me if we invented square roots and cuber numbers AFTER we observed nature and tried to create formulas that gave us precise output, but the fact that it happened the other way around is astonishing to me (not that we came up with the mathematical concept, but that nature "likes" these concepts so much).
It almost feels like a discovery of the "code" of nature that seems almost too simple to be good enough for reality. | The answer is dimensions. Things that scale in two or three dimensions tend to use square and cube numbers respectively.
To take the law of universal gravitation as an example - when talking about gravity, you have a massive object with a nonzero volume (usually a sphere) that has gravity. The surface of this object is essentially two-dimensional. As you move away from the object (increasing R) gravity "spreads out" in these two dimensions, which results in the force of gravity decreasing with the square of distance.
Light works the same way, light coming from a spherical source (like the sun) spreads out in two dimensions, which means the amount of sunlight you get decreases with the square of distance from the sun. | 121 | 84 |
How come water does not flow deep into our ear canal? | Water has a high surface tension, and clings to the walls of a container. In order to flow deep into the ear canal, the water would need to displace the air already there. But the air has no way to escape past the water. You might thing that the air would just rise above the water allowing the water to flow under but surface tension forces dominate gravity at this point.
If you trap air and water in a straw and cover both ends you can see that the water won't change position relative to the air no matter how you orientation the straw, unless you do something like shake it violently. | 33 | 20 |
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Why do you need to take malaria pills BEFORE you travel? | General rule of pharmacokinetics, start with high dose, probably double what the goal is. This gets the drug passed "first pass" which is removal by liver and kidney, but leaves "target" dose in the blood stream. Then keep dose steady, which takes a little while to reach equilibrium since the bodies natural response is to clean things up. If you have to be exposed, you want it to be in this "steady" state when there is adequate supply in the blood to adequately fight off the invading condition. You don't want a inconsistent amount in the blood leaving yourself susceptible to infection. Once the risk has cleared, the dose is stepped down, for one of two reasons, 1) to fight off any small lingering amounts of whatever the drug is for 2) some drugs cause shock to the system if not stepped down (prednisone and most steroid based drugs) and slowly let the body clear it with little to no repercussions from taking the drug. Hope that helps. | 24 | 56 |
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The hard problem of consciousness and solipsism | From what I understand, the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" arises from the difficulty in reconciling physicalism with the *phenomenal* qualities of our experience. Now, I take physicalism to be the view that there is an external world made of matter which obeys some observable laws, and furthermore this "external" world is "all there is". In fact, under this view, it doesn't even make sense to talk of an "external" world, because it is not really "external" with respect to anything: even we observers are part of it. On the other hand, the phenomenal qualities of our experience, which I assume to be the so-called "qualia", are so *unlike* the kind of entities that we think make up the external world: they are immaterial, private and indescribable, although they are immediately knowable by us, we are immediately acquainted with them. We could in theory discover (and considerable progress is being made in this respect by neuroscience) a perfect, one-to-one correlation between some parts of the external world (brain states) and our phenomenal experiences, but this would be a correlation between two very distinct and unreconcilable dimensions of reality.
There are typically three attempts at resolving this contradiction.
1. Some people (like Chalmers) "bite the bullet" and accept the existence of a non-physical dimension of reality.
2. Some others (especially neuroscientists I believe) attempt to explain qualia in physical terms.
3. Finally, some people (like Dennett) deny the existence of qualia altogether, they practically say that we are tricked by our brains into *believing* that we have qualia.
Now, I find the second attempt metaphysically unfeasible, because it seems to me that it cannot ever go beyond correlation (or even causation, but I don't think it makes a difference here) between two ultimately unreconcilable dimensions of reality. The third view feels very awkward to me, because it denies the very thing that gives rise to it. Surely our phenomenal experience is a *datum*, nay, the *only* datum; it is the starting point of all knowledge. Only from our phenomenal experience can we *postulate* the existence of an external world, but *we don't have to*. It is just a very convenient interpretation and allows us to better understand our experiences (for example it is convenient to think that the sun keeps moving in its apparent motion on the sky when I take a nap, so that when I wake up I have a simple explanation of why the sun appears on a different location in the same trajectory: it simply kept moving in the same direction as when I was observing it). It doesn't matter if the external world "actually" exists or not, our experience is the same regardless. Solipsism and the existence of an external world are qualitatively the same for us and distinguishing them is as impossible as proving the existence (*edit:* OR nonexistence) of god.
Thus the first attempt is metaphysically redundant, but not in the sense that people like Dennett take it to be: the redundant postulate is not the existence of an immaterial dimension, but the existence of a physical external world; solipsism suffices to account for our experience and we don't need to posit the existence of an external world. So why can't solipsism solve the hard problem of consciousness? [EDIT: as has been pointed out to me indirectly, I should clarify this. I don't mean that we need to show the *correctness* of solipsism vs external world in order to solve the hard problem. But I believe that thinking about the way in which the "solipsism postulate" and the "external world postulate" are equivalent should solve it, because the Hard Problem seems to rest on the asymmetry between these two postulates, with a strong preference for the "external world postulate". Although I do admit that my argument seems to also give reasons for rejecting the existence of an external world, because it is just as good an interpretation as solipsism, but at the same time confuses our intuition (like when we think there is a hard problem of consciousness) in a way that solipsism does not.]
I know that I am probably missing something big here (for example I am aware that I am implicitly assuming that the Hard Problem is a metaphysical one) so I am hoping that someone can point it out to me.
EDIT 2: as pointed out by u/wokeupabug, solipsism is an unnecessarily "strong" view. Berkeleyan idealism is just as good. | But the question isn't whether solipsism *suffices* to account for our experience, it's whether solipsism *ought to be affirmed as the correct account* of our experience. Your conflation of these two issues seems to be the main place your reasoning is running amok here. | 17 | 52 |
What happens in our brains when we are asked to say the first word that comes to our minds? How does our brain choose? | Studies show that part of what is happening is priming from whatever came before it. For example, if you hear "money" and "Finance", and then are asked to say a word related to "bank", it will be a word related to a financial institution, whereas if you hear words like "fish" and "river", and are asked to say a word related to "bank", you'll say something related to a river bank.
Also, if people are asked to say a string of nouns as quickly as possible, they will all tend to be related: "tree, leaf, grass, dirt, road, car, tire" etc. It's far less random than we believe when it's actually studied. | 10 | 15 |
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ELI5: If one cannot give consent while intoxicated why can one still engage in transactions, such as buying something while drunk? | I mean it seems like the merchant would be unable to sell you something as you could not legally consent to buying it. Is he not taking advantage of you? | Law student here who is really good with contracts:
To briefly answer your question -- **technically**, if Person-A is intoxicated then Person-B should **not** engage in a transaction with them. Despite what some commenters have said, "contracts" can be oral or written... and they can be as simple as buying a stick of gum.
So let's say Person-A ("Adam") goes to the store. Adam is intoxicated. He picks up a pack of gum, walks it to the register. When the check-out person scans the item and presents the price, Adam pulls out his money to pay for it. This is an offer to purchase the gum. The store clerk can "refuse service" (reject the offer), or accept it by taking the money in exchange for the product.
If Adam wakes up the next morning and can't remember what the heck he did last night because he was so black-out drunk... but he comes across a pack of gum and a receipt... he could go back to return the gum (assuming it isn't opened). If the store says "no," then Adam could bring a law suit to recover his money by showing that the "contract" (agreement) between himself and the store is invalidated for lack of "mutual assent." If he could show that he was wasted at the time of sale and -- most importantly -- the clerk should have reasonably known that he was wasted, then he can argue that he was not in a fit state to engage in the transcation.
**WITH THAT SAID....**
Would anyone ever really go through all that trouble for stupid things like that? No. But if instead of a stick of gum it was *every* stick of gum in the entire store... and maybe all the candy, liquor, etc. If Adam just burns his credit card buying everything he can -- then that would be a bit more predatory of the clerk to engage in a transaction with them.
Keep in mind though -- if you are conscious enough to purposefully "get drunk" as a strategic measure to avoid being bound by a contract... it could be shown that you, in fact, were not drunk enough at the time. You'd have to essentially get so hammered that your "auto-pilot" kicks in, and you lose the conscious ability to assent. It's not a very high bar. In fact, it is one of the lowest bars required as far as mental health comes... lower than the level required to get married and far below the ability to devise a will. | 16 | 34 |
Why are white surfaces not mirrors? | An object is white because it reflects all wavelengths of light within the visible spectrum. Mirrors also reflect all light within this spectrum. So why are white surfaces not mirrors? Alternatively, shouldn't all mirrors be white? | Mirrors reflect images because the incoming light rays bounce at the same angle they come in at, this is usually stated as "angle of incidence equals angle of reflection". This means if you point a light beam at a mirror at 90 degrees, it will bounce back at 90 degrees, the same direction. If you aim the light beam at 45 degree angle to the mirror, it will reflect at 45 degrees. This is basically because the reflecting surface of a mirror is extremely smooth, even at the microscopic level.
But things which are white have rougher surfaces (at the microscopic level), and any light beam hitting it will just scatter in random directions, so incoming light just goes everywhere pretty much.
Think of it like bouncing a small rubber ball on a smooth surface like a sidewalk - dropping the ball it will bounce back in the same direction. But if you bounce the same ball on a pile of broken up bricks or jagged rocks, the ball will probably bounce away in a seemingly random direction. In this analogy light is like a whole lot of tiny rubber balls, a mirror is the smooth concrete, and white things are the pile of jagged rocks.
If you had an opaque white material and you polish it smooth enough, it will turn into a mirror. | 2,396 | 1,463 |
ELI5 why do so many people seem to hate hippies? | Like the title says! Anyone who I've met you is a 'hippy' has been a great person, and they have jobs so it's not like they are bumming off the economy | Two main reasons:
1) Historically, hippies *have* had a reputation of being (basically) bums. They didn't hold jobs, electing instead to simply take drugs, have sex, and mooch off of society. While not all hippies were like that, a *lot* of them were (and not to mention the politically charged situation with the Vietnam War draft and other issues like that). Even if hippies today don't have all that baggage, the reputation stays.
2) Hippies (just like any other "deviant" class) rub people the wrong way. Society has a set of rules that most people tend to abide by: you follow these rules, and you get something in return. Hippies basically say "we want all the stuff, but we don't want to play by the rules." Obviously this is a generalization, but it irritates people to see someone who is being treated the same way but not paying the same "costs." | 17 | 15 |
CMV: Critical Race Theory doesn't offer a clear or realistic solution to the supposed issue of "Systemic Oppression" | Perhaps I have not quite fully understood Critical Race Theory, or am missing a crucial point. However, as of now I just don't see this theory offering any realistic or clear solution to the issue of Systemic Oppression. From what I have read, it seems that CRT argues for the dismantlement of white supremacy by pointing out the inherently racist system of government in the U.S. It also criticizes liberalism and it's "colorblind" laws for being able to only point out the most obvious forms of racism, and not the subtle microaggressions that prey upon POC. It calls for POC to share their personal experiences with racism, and to use their narrative to fight systemic oppression. The main problem I have with CRT is that, while their arguments are understandable (I can understand how the U.S. could be fundamentally racist and supportive of the white status quo), I don't see a clear picture of what exactly they're offering to do to replace the supposedly "systemic" forms of racism and oppression in U.S. law. When I look at liberalism, I get a clear picture of how it wants to solve oppression and racism through laws that mandate that people of all races should have equal opportunity at success. I just don't see that kind of clear solution being offered with CRT. Is it asking us to dismantle the entire nation state of the U.S. and start anew? If not, are they asking for whites to continue recognizing their "position of privilege" for near eternity? It's just not clear what they're advocating for, and to me this makes CRT seem more of a anti-U.S. propaganda than an actual solution to race problems in this country. So if anyone could offer me a different viewpoint, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. | Critical race theory is an academic lens through which to analyze the role of race in the United States. It’s a method of study.
Liberalism is a political ideology.
The reason you’re not getting a sense that critical race theory offers action items, while liberalism does, is that theoretical academic lenses aren’t about action in the same way political ideologies are—they’re about analyzing and understanding. | 40 | 35 |
When fossil fuels are forming, what makes the dead stuff become oil vs coal vs other fossil fuels? | Is it the type of organism deposited? The conditions? How does this work? | The process of transforming organic matter into hydrocarbons is controlled by 2 main effects: temperature (itself controlled by depth) and the composition of the organic matter.
In the case of marine sediments, the majority of the organic matter is derived from plancton. In this case, thermal maturation results in a process called catagenesis, whereby the organic molecules are progressively streamlined and shortened as temperature goes up. At first, assorted radicals are flushed out and replaced by simple hydrogen. Further along the process, long chains and cyclic molecules begin to break down into alcanes; this point would correspond to the oil window where liquid crude is produced. Further along yet, alcanes break down into progressively shorter molecules and result in natural gas (gas window). Beyond this point (about 2 km), the hydrogen bonds become unstable and the organic matter "cooks itself" into mineral carbon species (graphite).
In the case of continental deposits, the majority of the organic matter comes from trees, moss and peat. This flora has an overall different bulk chemistry, in large part due to the abundance of lignin. So this stuff matures into coal following a similar progression from peat, to lignite to bituminous coal to anthracite. | 389 | 1,353 |
CMV: I don't see a point in having so many pronounces to choose from | I don't get why people need other pronouns when there are already they/them, she/her, he/him for them to choose from.
As someone whose English isn't their first language it's so frustrating. I feel bad for those who already struggles to use she or he correctly now they have to be mindful and learn other pronouns? Plus some of them r hard af to say Xe/Xem, Ze/Zir... Xie/Xem. I hope English as an additional language people don't have to learn this any time soon... it just seems in inconvenient.
I don't have a problem with trans/NB people btw, it's just the pronouns, ik someone irl who uses 3 pronouns (includig Xie) and I don't see why...
Edit: just noticed title says pronounces and not pronouns* | The point is to create room in our social hierarchy for people to explore themselves and the idea space of gender and gender expression, so that we can learn more about ourselves and our society an converge towards better norms in the future.
The more exotic pronouns are never going to be mainstream, they're never going to be adopted by more than .00001% of the population, mostly tens exploring their identities and activists/artists exploring the bounds of our culture and social expression.
Theoretical physicists need equations and models that deal with 12 spatial dimensions when considering the most in-depth questions of their field and the nature of the universe, but the average person will never really need to think in more than 3 dimensions at a time. The fact that the average person only needs dimensions doesn't mean we should abolish all higher-dimension equations that theoretical physicists want to use, and the fact that they are using them doesn't inconvenience or invalidate the experiences of normal people.
Similarly, that .000001% of people who are exploring the outer boundaries of self-expression and cultural norms need the flexibility to try out new constructs an ideas, and attaching these new ideas to the established framework of pronouns is a necessary step, like attaching the idea of higher-level dimension to established mathematics and equations.
In their hands, these are useful exploratory tools, and the fact that average people will never need them doesn't mean they should be taken away form the explorers who do. Nor does the use of these exotic terms by the explorers invalidate or impinge on the experiences and needs of average people. | 22 | 37 |
ELI5: How do news organizations report natural disaster death counts so specifically and so quickly (i.e. "88 people dead as a result of ...")? | When there are major incidents, local emergency workers generally establish a command post-type place where things like fatalities are reported as soon as they're located. When they give the death toll, they give it based off the numbers that have been reported thus far. | 13 | 23 |
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ELI5: Why do they launch boats sideways instead of forward when first launching them? | It also looks like they just roll straight in, do they not use any mechanism to slow the boat down? | Boats are designed to have their weight supported for the entirety of the keel length.
If you tried to launch long boat pointy bit first, you'd have a time when the front is in the water, the back is still on the dock and the middle is unsupported. This (potentially) kills the boat.
And there's no real need to slow one down, since they're designed to withstand many assloads of force, at least in the directions they're designed to handle force. | 31 | 31 |
CMV: Peanut Butter should absolutely be served in a tube much like icing or toothpaste. | I'm sitting here toiling over removing that last bit of peanut butter from the bottom of the jar. I have to reach a whole hand in to get the peanut butter at the bottom and I end up getting it all over my hands and knife handle. I see this to be ridiculous considering the alternative.
If peanut butter could be placed in a tube it could easily be squeezed out onto bread or whatever and would be much cleaner. This would make it considerably easy to make sure that none is left in the container when it's done being eaten. I think that the old way is outdated, ineffective, insufficient and should be done away with in favor of the tube.
EDIT: I can't get smaller hands so don't even bother making that point.
EDIT: EDIT: I've included [some pictures to help illustrate my points](http://imgur.com/a/Sxpqa) | 1. A jar can be used for dipping pretzels or crackers in a way that a tube cannot.
2. It's easier to measure peanut butter from a jar because you can scoop it right out with the tea/tablespoon. This is helpful for recipes or calorie tracking.
3. Natural peanut butter separates. It would be difficult to properly mix the oil back into the peanut butter in a tube.
Edit: also a quick Google search reveals that peanut butter is already sold in squeeze tubes | 73 | 202 |
ELI5: I have endometriosis—how does my heating pad make my pain subside? | Heat or ice work for pain relief because effectively they offer two solutions.
Heat increases blood flow which promotes the ability of the body to heal. This is more useful for muscular pain such as those muscles in your pelvic area. This is more suitable for pain that is not caused by muscle tears or recent injury.
Conversely, Ice slows blood flow and is best to remove inflammation and slow the process. This is why you use ice on a sprained ankle so it helps reduce swelling. Technically ice could help reduce the swelling effects but it isn’t pleasant long term!
You should also consider the psychological effects of having something warm and comforting against you when you are in pain compared to something icy and cold. It’s the same reason we like physical comfort when we are sad or in physical pain. | 32 | 49 |
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Explain academic philosophy to me (science PhD) | **TLDR:** how does your committee determine you've done "enough" to achieve a PhD in philosophy? Give me some very clear, concrete examples of philosophical "rigor" (for example, submitting for peer-review...what kind of comments do you receive and how exactly are these comments not subjective and simply a matter of making a more convincing intellectual argument?). If I submit a paper to an academic journal, there is statistical significance or there isn't; the techniques were utilized correctly or they weren't; my experimental design has gaping holes or it doesn't; at the end of my PhD I've published x amount of papers or discovered novelty via scientific rigor (proving through experimentation) or I haven't.
I have friends who are philosophy PhDs and they get very annoyed when I even suggest the notion that someone can have merit as a "philosopher" without traditional academic training. In fact, I notice several philosophy PhDs scoff at anyone outside of the strict academic bubble interpreting or laying out philosophical arguments ("they don't have the training"). Often, they will say to me: "you'd feel the same about a lay person making arguments in the context of your scientific study". Probably, but it's really not an apples to apples comparison despite how desperately a humanities PhD wants it to be. Philosophical techniques are fully intellectual. Scientific techniques are both intellectual and skill-based/hands on. I am a firm believer that any intellectually equipped lay person can ascertain the same level of knowledge in my field from reading on their own, as I can. In fact, I have met some individuals with no graduate level degree in the basic sciences, yet have a very strong grasp of all the most necessary scientific concepts as it relates to cell-bio, molecular bio, genetics...simply from reading. But, the separation point is they cannot do a western blot, perform qPCR, do survival surgeries on mice, perform techniques to alter a genome etc; they may understand all of this theoretically, but the PhD training is necessary to even have access to these techniques. A lay person can spend all of their free time after work tirelessly reading everything they can on a particular philosopher or school of thought; they can take the time to learn the mother language of that philosophy (greek, german) on their own.
From my perspective (which, I readily admit may be wrong and why I am posting), is that many humanities PhDs need to scoff at lay people having highly nuanced, philosophical arguments of merit, because those fields are based entirely on intellectual training. If you were to concede that someone outside of the academic Philo world had a degree of mastery, you'd be devaluing your formal academic training. From a basic science PhD perspective, it's not too much a dig on my field to acknowledge a lay person with intellectual science mastery (knows biochemistry inside and out etc) without devaluing my formal training; the technical skills I have that they lack in actually performing those techniques make my formal training totally necessary. | I don't think that anyone would deny that is theoretically possible to practice philosophy at an academic level without going through formal training, and that's true of any academic field. *But it's very, very, unlikely.*
I suspect your friends scoff at the notion because philosophy in particular has the air of "anyone can do it," unlike the sciences, and this conception is based on probably a further misconception about the historical practice of philosophy. It's true that anyone can do philosophy in the same way that anyone can do science by creating a potato clock, but that doesn't count for much. The other thing about philosophy and perhaps humanities fields in general is that, when you try and do the work on your own, there's no immediate feedback from your attempts to let you know you've failed. You can carry on your whole life with some poorly constructed idea or interpretation of some philosopher without ever having it checked by someone, criticized, etc.
And of course, philosophy attracts a lot of cranks who are really, really, really sure they got it right and all of those fancy people in their ivory towers just can't see it. Anyone who has been on a departmental email list for a philosophy, math, or physics department has gotten an email before by some rando claiming to solve this or that central problem in one of those fields, or how once you understand the world as an alabaster time conclave you'll see the ultimate truth. | 182 | 106 |
ELI5: How do illegal immigrants apply for welfare if they dont have any social security card or formal identification? | I hear a lot of talk in the American debates about illegal immigration constantly and how they are using welfare. How is this possible if they dont even have the right credentials to sign up for welfare? I cant even get my new drivers license without several forms of ID. | Under circumstances where you are eligible for such a program, there are usually alternatives to a Social Security Number. For example, illegal aliens can legally receive the child tax credit for their dependents, and can file their tax returns using an IRS-provided International Taxpayer Identification Number instead of an SSN. If you are otherwise eligible for a program, most agencies do not require you to provide an SSN or similar documentation if you can prove you do not have them and cannot obtain them.
As for welfare fraud, illegal aliens who participate in that do it the same way as other people, by making false statements and using false documents. There's a lively market in Social Security cards and birth certificates, which illegal aliens often use without knowing they belong to a real person.
Your driver's license is not a welfare program. Many states try to make it easy to apply for welfare (though others make it hard), because they feel it is important for the poor to have access to these programs, but they make it hard to apply for a driver's license for the first time, because they want to apply extra scrutiny before providing an identification document. | 15 | 88 |
ELI5:What are the actual physical changes that happen inside a computer while it's running? | Specifically curious about what it means to write something to memory: What happens inside a computer when I save a text file, or a Jpeg, or save a game, or anything else that changes the state of the computer from what it was before, to something else, and how it continues to exist after the computer is turned off. | Permanent storage in computers generally is done by one of two technologies.
For magnetic hard drives, there's a spinning plate covered with magnetic material and a mechanism that allows to detect and change the "direction" of the magnetism in very very small segments of that platter. So writing a file would involve that mechanism changing the magnetic pattern on the disk.
For solid state drives (SSD) in computers, as well as the common USB flash memory sticks, the memory consists of a silicon chip with lots and lots of very small isolated conducting spaces which can store electric charge (extra electrons), and transistors to control that. Writing to that memory involves storing electric charge in some (and removing from others) of these "pockets" called NAND cells.
Both of these things are somewhat permanent and continue to persist after power is turned off. | 43 | 50 |
If I'm in polluted air or there's an awful smell, is it better to breathe through my nose or my mouth, to have as few molecules reach my lungs as possible? | It honestly depends on what is in the air. Is is particles or chemicals? For larger particles (think dust) , breathing slowly through your nose would be best. Your nose is built as a rough filter.
For a chemical, think paint thinner or another solvent, it wouldn't matter. You need specialty air filters to remove these (think gas mask).
Smells, which are generally chemical, will enter your lungs through either your nose or mouth. Your body has no real method to filter out things like this.
If you are concerned about particals, wear a N95 or N100 rated mask. For solvent or smells, which would not be considered particles, you will need a respirator rated for solvent.
Hopefully this helps. | 107 | 199 |
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ELI5: How are we able to stand up and balance on two feet easily, but it's hard to balance on only one foot? | It's a skill, let's say standing wasn't a thing that you do normally so you will have to face the same issues as standing on one leg (different of course).
Quick explanation about how you gain a skill (standing, handatand, riding a bike):
You just need to do it, time after time and each time you are improving your motion and strength your muscles for that position/movement.
And when finally succeeding, unconsciously you work on smoothing it up to use less energy spending for the action - this keep going and going.
There is a lot of info about how the brain really does it if you're interested in that.
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How much of a difference does wearing white/black on a hot day make? | I've heard that you should wear white on a hot day because it reflects off more radiation. How much of a difference does it really make on how hot you feel? | This also depends on the design of the clothing. Loose fitting clothing such as Arab dress can have a dark overcoat over a loose open bottom shirt. This can set up air circulation through a chimney effect. | 12 | 32 |
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